Continuing a years-long tradition between two sister cities, 2025 was MVHS’s turn to visit the city of Iwata, Japan, described as a leadership and exchange program, said Iwata co-coordinator Nicole Higley.
Last March, students from Iwata Minami High School in Japan visited MVHS, taking up residence with “host siblings” and spending time at the school. The visit inspired some students to join this year’s trip, sophomore Elsa Sapojnikoff said.
“I really wanted to be able to experience a different culture from my own, and I was really inspired by their own cultural assembly when they came and performed for us,” Sapojnikoff said. “I thought it was really amazing to see kids our age from such a different part of the world…share in front of so many foreign people.”
The application process involved signing up on a form and participating in group interviews with a panel to show personal qualities that would make one fit appropriately in the program, junior Benjamin Lin said.
The trip took place over spring break earlier this April and included stops in Tokyo, Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Iwata, Sapojnikoff said. The delegation visited World Heritage sites like the atomic bomb dome in Hiroshima.
“There was a very diverse amount of activities that got us into perspectives of different corners of Japan, not just the popular trends that we see on Instagram and Tiktok, but the actual culture such as the shrines and temples,” Lin said.
Students participated in activities including meditation, making rice paddles and preparing traditional desserts. Although the delegation had planned to attend a baseball game, rainy weather forced its cancellation, said junior Josie Wang.
MVHS students also stayed with their own “host siblings” who agreed to live with them for the week.
“At first it was terrifying, because there’s such a big gap between you two…I found it really hard to communicate initially, because although my host sibling knew English, she was just shy,” Sapojnikoff said.
For Sapojnikoff, a friendship was finally achieved through talking and the avoidance of awkward silences.
“It had been really tough to connect with her on a deeper level, but it was that day where she started initiating conversation with me…it finally felt like it was reciprocal,” Sapojnikoff said. “It was a lot of mutual effort on both of our parts.”
Others had previous history with their host siblings – Wang had hosted her sibling in 2024 and had kept communicating with her after that.
“I already knew her, which was good, and she was really nice,” Wang said. “She’s president of the flower arrangement club in Iwata, so I went to her club and practiced arranging flowers.”
Over the trip, MVHS students hosted their own cultural assembly which shared aspects of Mountain View life through the format of a game show, went shopping with their host siblings and went sightseeing with their host families.
“My family took me to see Mount Fuji…and then we got lunch, and then we walked the world’s longest wooden pedestrian bridge,” Wang said. “And then we came home and had dinner together and made s’mores.”
The MVHS students even went to school with their host siblings.
“I was able to participate in a PE class that he took, which I loved very much,” Lin said. “We shopped together. We also went on a day trip with the entire family to a shrine or a temple.”
The delegates said they noticed many similarities between Iwata Minami and MVHS.
“The kids are similar,” Sapojnikoff said. “There’s friend groups, there’s always these cliques… you can see friendships, and they’re super similar to the way that we see people at Mountain View High School interact with their friends.”
They also noticed some differences.
“Classes are bonded in homerooms,” Lin said.”Because they have classes all in the homeroom…they really bond within that homeroom.”
Altogether, the delegates walked out of the experience with a new perspective on Japan.
“I was able to see so many different walks of life than my own. I was able to create so many new relationships with these people all the way across the globe,” Sapojnikoff said. “I think it was a super, super positive experience that I would drop everything to do again.”
