Yuko Kamidera is a senior at Hiroshima University on their education track, who has spent the last few weeks at Elizabethtown College.

Japanese universities, unlike their American sister schools, start their academic year in April. Often times, upperclassmen like Kamidera spend their spring break leading up to the new year job-hunting. But Kamidera decided to do something different and applied for a study abroad opportunity hosted through her university.

Hiroshima University is famous for its education programs. It is partnered with several different universities around the world, but Etown is currently its only American partner. The university has eight partners in countries including New Zealand, England, Indonesia, China and Taiwan.

Kamidera has traveled abroad three times during her university career. Before coming to Etown, she visited Canada, England and Korea. This was her first trip to the United States. Before her visit, she only knew what she saw on television and thought that the US was “a little scary” and far more dangerous.

She was surprised when she came to Etown and thought the town and school were comfortable. The experience so far “opened up her eyes [and] broke her stereotypical views,” translated assistant professor of Japanese and Asian studies, Nobuaki Takahashi.

As part of the program, Kamidera has been observing Takahashi’s Japanese classes and will be given a chance to lead the class herself for two weeks. “Monday I will do my first class. [The] students [are] pretty good at Japanese,” Kamidera said. She also added how happy she is that “they loved Japanese and languages and cultures” and urges students who are able to to visit Japan in person. As she found when she came to the US, people can gain a much more cohesive view when they visit a foreign country personally than by just reading about it on the Internet.

Even though Kamidera is enjoying her time in the classroom, her ultimate goal is not to be a Japanese teacher. Instead, she hopes to work with foreigners and non-native Japanese speakers outside the classroom. She particularly hopes to work in a guest-centric field such as an airport. So why did Kamidera decide to participate in this program? During her first year at Hiroshima, several seniors gave a presentation about the benefits of study abroad and it caught Kamidera’s interest almost immediately.

The student teacher exchange officially started in the spring of 2014, when Etown received its first Japanese student via the program. However, the story goes much further back. In 2012, Takahashi was contacted by Yukiko Hatasa from Hiroshima University. Takahashi and Hatasa had previously worked together while Takahashi pursued his master’s and doctoral degrees. Hatasa, who is well-known in the field of Japanese pedagogy, nominated Takahashi and Etown to host a student teacher every spring semester during the Japanese students’ spring break. The overall goal of the program is to train and supervise Japanese students that hope to teach Japanese to non-native speakers.

Takahashi teaches upper-level Japanese language courses from the second year on. Regarding the student teachers, he thinks that bringing in a new face and a new style can be good for the students. Otherwise, they will just have the same professor over and over again, which does have its benefits but can be trying.

Takahashi also believes having the student teachers there helps keep him in check. He said that for Etown, “it’s good to have a partnership with Hiroshima University” and that this “will probably help the Japanese program” at Etown.

For Kamidera, the most difficult part of the trip was getting over her initial jet lag and remembering differences between Japanese and American cultures such as watching for cars on the opposite side of the street and the time dinner is eaten. She recommends students “up for all the challenges and hardship” broaden their horizons by studying abroad. Etown has treated Kamidera well, she feels, and she appreciates all of the kind-hearted people she has met here. Her final piece of advice for students: “Go for it, do it, experience!”