There’s been a long history of friendship and collaboration between the DMV and Japan. The most well-known of these cultural exchanges are the cherry blossom trees that bloom in Washington, D.C. every year during the springtime. They were gifted to the United States in 1912 as a show of goodwill and friendship from the people of Japan.
Efforts to bring these native trees to the U.S. actually date back to 1885, when journalist and world traveler Eliza Scidmore returned from a trip to Japan and was so inspired by the sight of the blooming cherry trees there that she spent the next 24 years doggedly trying to bring them over to her country.
A similar partnership between the DMV and Japan persists to this day through two schools—Frederick Douglass High School in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, and Kanagawa Prefectural Yamato Nishi Senior High School in Yamato, Japan. Since 2001, the two high schools have been sister schools, with Yamato Nishi students studying abroad in the U.S. at Frederick Douglass High School and Frederick Douglass students taking a trip to Japan during the summer.
The COVID-19 pandemic posed an obstacle for these student exchange programs, as travel became more difficult. But students at the two schools continued to meet virtually over Zoom to chat and discuss what they’ve learned.
“Students would get on the Zoom calls in the evening here in Maryland, because Japan is 12 hours ahead of us—it would be 8:30 [a.m.] in the morning there, so they would all be in class,” says Jill Turner, sponsor of Frederick Douglass High School’s Japan Connection program. Turner is also a teacher in the school’s family and consumer sciences department, as well as the head coach for its swimming, varsity girls’ softball and junior varsity volleyball teams.
“We would meet for about an hour, and the students would talk to one another,” Turner adds. “[The Yamato Nishi students’] English skills have gotten better over the years, and students are able to talk to each other on social media like Instagram when they’re not visiting. Things have been developing better and better every year.”
Frederick Douglass High School is only one of the many overseas schools Yamato Nishi Senior High School has a relationship with. According to the school’s official documentation, staff also conduct exchange programs with Camp Zama American High School, Maximiliansgymnasium München in Germany, Rosehill College in New Zealand and Kwangmoon High School in South Korea.
Students at both Frederick Douglass and Yamato Nishi can sign up to participate in this cultural exchange and usually host each other when traveling to each other’s home country. Turner notes that there were plans for students from Yamato Nishi to come to the U.S. in March 2024, but these plans fell through because there were too few students at Frederick Douglass who were able to host all of the Yamato Nishi students who had signed up
to participate.
Currently, the two schools are working to reestablish their visitation program.
“The students that are here [at Frederick Douglass High School] now have never seen the Japanese students in the building, so they don’t have a point of reference,” Turner notes. “We’re really trying to build that confidence and that familiarity back up, so that they will want to open their homes to Japanese students in the spring.”
The students still have a strong bond through their regular virtual meetings and the relationships they maintain through social media, but the travel and exchange component of the partnership is what really allows true cultural exchange to take place.
“When [students from Yamato Nishi] came to visit us, our students were able to communicate with them and ask them questions,” Turner recalls. “They would attend classes with their host, and they were able to recognize that they’re the same in a lot of ways. They have the same likes. They like shopping, they like different musical groups, they like the high school experience.”
Interested in cultural exchange? Learn more about the school’s program at pgcps.org/schools/frederick-douglass-high/activities/japan. Other cultural exchange opportunities for DMV students include the World Smarts Changemakers program in connection with Guatemala (irex.org) and the National Student Exchange program for university students at select schools such as Bowie State University (nse.org).
