CHS Welcomes Japanese Kizuna Students

Last spring the Cabot High School Japanese language teacher received an e-mail invitation from Seattle, WA concerning the Kizuna Project which consisted of an exchange program wherein 23 American students and their teacher would travel to Japan and visit the country for two weeks to see how the country was recovering from two devastating disasters, the Tsunami and the East Japan Great Earthquake, (which happened March 11th, 2011).

The project included an agreement that in the second year of the program, 2013, Japan would send 19 students and their teacher to America, more specifically, Cabot, Arkansas, where they would stay with host families and visit an American school/community.

Cabot High School was selected for the project because it met the two criteria:  It had a Japanese language program in the school and it was located in a state that met the disaster criteria by way of recent tornadoes.  The Kizuna Project has been totally funded by the Japanese government. 

The Japanese visitors arrived in Cabot on March 9th and remained in town through March 12th. The host families treated the visitors with tours of Cabot and Little Rock and Cabot High School provided a reception and dinner for the students.

Japanese students with their student hosts: (From left to right) CHS student Melissa, Kazuki Yamaguchi, Minami Wada and CHS student Mark)

Cabot High School was very excited to be a part of the Kizuna Project. 

To learn more information about this project please visit www.laurasian.org