Eight local high school students returned from a trip of a lifetime to Japan June 26—and they came back to Gilroy with eyes opened to the gracious spirit of its people.
As part of the increasingly popular Gilroy-Takko Student Exchange Program, known as GTSEP, sophomores and juniors from both Gilroy and Christopher High schools immersed themselves in Japanese culture and spent more than a week in Takko-Machi—Japan’s own garlic capital and Gilroy’s sister city.
The students met with the rural farming town’s leadership, toured a slew of schools and exchanged gifts, with the goal of strengthening a transcontinental relationship and forming new friendships.
“It’s to make them international citizens,” GTSEP Advisor and Co-founder Phil Robb said. “We want them to be exposed not only to the Japanese culture but to take risks and step outside their comfort zones; everything we do pretty much does that.”
For more than two decades, Gilroy students have made the voyage to the rural farming town to serve as ambassadors. In 1989, as GHS chamber choir director, Robb took a group of students to Takko-Machi, and over the course of six more trips through 2008, the bond between Gilroy and its sister city grew.
Since 2009, when the GTSEP program was formed, five groups of GUSD students have made the transpacific voyage to Takko-Machi. Every year, Japanese families host the students so they experience the customs, culture and language firsthand.
“It was an extraordinary experience especially because the program allows you to get a sense of the culture and how people in Japan live,” Bridget Brown, CHS student and GTSEP participant, said. “You’re staying in a house with a family, eating what they eat for breakfast and dinner and practicing their traditions.”
For many, the bond between students and their host families long outlasts the duration of the trip.
GTSEP Advisor Jessica Foley first visited Takko in 2009 after she was selected as Garlic Queen and said she developed a lasting relationship with her host family and other Takko-Machi residents.
“I had an incredible experience that is often difficult to put into words,” Foley said, adding that she lived in Takko-Machi between 2010 and 2011. “For me, it’s just like being home again when I visit friends and family. My host family that I lived with over there refers to me as their sister or daughter.”
“The students definitely come back from the experience with their eyes wide open because of the incredible hospitality and friendliness of the people,” Robb added.
During this year’s trip, students visited Takko High School where they helped clean up the school—since there are no custodians—picked garlic in the fields, learned the basics of Japanese calligraphy and more.
While in town, the students were featured on Takko’s own television station and camera crews tailed the group throughout their visit. Gilroy’s GTSEP participants also appeared on Takko’s nightly news program and in a locally distributed newsletter.
“The whole town gets to see what the kids are up to,” Foley added.
This year’s trip was a groundbreaking one, Robb said, adding that all the students memorized their introductions in Japanese and presented them to Takko-Machi’s mayor, dignitaries and others during formal exchange ceremonies.
“This is the first trip where every student has memorized his or her introduction,” he said. “It was really cool to watch them stand up there in front of an audience of Japanese, speak in Japanese, and be understood. The kids put me to shame because I’ve been there nine times and have never done that before.”
Prior to the trip, the program’s participants—chosen through a competitive application and interview process—meet once a month between December and May where they learn helpful phrases in Japanese, wrote and practiced their introductions.
But no amount of training can prepare the students for Takko, Foley said.
“We can get them ready to experience Japan and have an idea of what to expect, but I’ve been with GTSEP on four trips, and every time, the kids are overwhelmed—in a good way,” she said.
“I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything; it was fantastic,” Brown added.
Robb said saying goodbye is always difficult, but there’s a way to make it bearable.
“We don’t say ‘goodbye’; it’s ‘see you next time,’” he said. “We never know when we’ll see each other again, but we know we will because these exchanges keep happening.
For more information on the GTSEP program, visit gilroytakkosep.org.
