Jefferson students were presented with a unique opportunity to learn about Japanese culture and education. On Jan. 6th, high school exchange students from five different science-based schools in Tokyo and Yokohama arrived to share their culture and individual research projects. They gave eighth period presentations on their experiments and visited Jefferson’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classes throughout the day.

“Today we have exchange students from five different schools in Japan teach us about science over there, since they’re also practically STEM schools,” freshman Vivian Nguyen said. “Each school has a couple representatives, somewhere from one to three, to present their own experiment, similar to IBET [Integrated Biology, English, and Technology] projects and the senior research labs.”

Many Jefferson students signed up for the eighth period activity, which lasted through both A and B blocks.

“I thought it would be interesting to come here because you get to learn so many things, even if you’re a senior already, that you didn’t know before,” Nguyen said.

The activity was a learning experience for both the Jefferson community and exchange students. Both parties had goals in mind of what they wanted to gain from the interaction. Nguyen looked forward to looking into the thought processes of high schoolers from another country.

“I want to be able to see how differently they think and how they can offer up new ideas so I can learn more too,” Nguyen said.

Japanese exchange student Toshiki Hiraoka had similar thoughts of hoping to learn a different culture’s point of view.

“I want to know about the mind of Americans. I want to get a lot of viewpoints, so I want to know the viewpoint of Americans,” Hiraoka said.