SEQUIM — After a six-year hiatus, delegates from Shiso City, Japan, returned to Sequim to hold conversations about restarting the student exchange program that began 30-plus years ago.
It was halted in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors.
Shiso City representatives Kenji Tomita, the deputy mayor, and Satoshi Ishihara with the city’s Planning and Coordination Department, visited Sequim Oct. 13-17, took in the sights and met with various community stakeholders.
Through translator Jennie Petit with the Sequim-Shiso Sister City Association, Tomita said in an interview that, due to COVID-19, they were unable to continue the student exchange program as planned.
“Coming to Sequim allows us to again re-deepen that relationship, re-strengthen that relationship, again, so it’s really an important visit for us,” he said.
In an Oct. 15 meeting, members of the Sequim-Shiso Sister City Association agreed to the delegates’ proposal to start a three-year exchange cycle: the first year being an online exchange tentatively slated for Jan. 24-25, 2026, while the second year five Sequim students in high school and three chaperones would visit Shiso City in 2027, and in the third year Shiso City students and representatives would visit late summer 2028.
Organizers said the visits used to be about 10 days to Japan, and the new proposal is for about a week.
Volunteers with the Sequim-Shiso Sister City Association said they’ll seek letters of support for the new exchange program from Sequim School District and the city of Sequim as the program is a separate nonprofit.
In a meeting earlier this month between the Sequim-Shiso Sister City Association and Japan-America Society of the State of Washington, participants said Shiso City officials wanted to rethink exchange activities due to some changes since COVID-19 in Japan, including higher costs for families to travel and host.
Jim Stoffer, president of the Sequim-Shiso Sister City Association, said participants feel very positive that the program is continuing and that this recent trip helped shore up their relationship with Shiso City.
For more information about the Sequim-Shiso Sister City Association, call Stoffer at 360-775-9356, email sequimsistercityassn@gmail.com or visit sequimwa.gov/239/Sister-City.
Group, garden beginnings
Founded in 1993, the Sequim Sister Sister City Association has helped coordinate 120-plus Sequim students (ninth-graders) to represent Sequim in Japan from 1994-2019.
The student exchange program focused on culture, education and friendship while they lived with host families. To raise funds, the students held car washes and garage sales, and they worked odd jobs to help pay for the trip.
Sequim agreed to a Sister City agreement on June 5, 1993, with the City of Yamasaki, Japan.
As a gesture of friendship in November 1994, then-mayor of Yamasaki Junzo Yasui offered to establish a garden in Sequim, which they would go on to help fund for 10 years. City council members approved the garden in August 1995, and it became the Sequim-Shiso Friendship Garden near Blake Avenue around the pond at Carrie Blake Community Park.
In October 1997, a stone lantern was sculpted and delivered by a friend of the Yamasaki International Friendship Association, and he came to Sequim to help install it where it remains today.
The cities’ partnership was reaffirmed after Yamasaki merged with three other towns to form Shiso City on April 1, 2005.
Sequim parks staff provide ongoing maintenance of the garden while about 10 volunteers work weekly from April through October to maintain it. Through the years, various service groups, such as the Sequim Sunrise Rotary and Sequim Valley Lions Club, provided time and labor, and local nurseries and private funds have helped fund or provide in-kind donations.
Current trip
Some of the Japanese delegates’ excursions included stops at the Sequim City Council meeting, the Sequim-Shiso Sister City Friendship Garden in Carrie Blake Community Park, Sequim Museum and Arts, Greywolf Elementary School, Dungeness River Nature Center and other Sequim attractions and events, including a gala dinner on Oct. 15.
Sequim Mayor Brandon Janisse read a proclamation about the Sequim-Shiso City partnership at the Oct. 13 Sequim City Council meeting, saying the friendship between the cities “reflects a shared vision of peace, cooperation and respect that transcends national boundaries, enriching both communities through enduring personal and cultural connections.”
After Janisse read the proclamation, Tomita presented traditional Japanese performing arts masks from Shiso City that represent friendship, connection and happiness. They’ll be on display inside the Sequim Civic Center’s Sister City display case in the near future, staff said.
Sequim Deputy Mayor Rachel Anderson, who volunteers with the Sequim-Shiso Friendship Garden and the Sequim Sister City Association, said supporting the partnership with Shiso City is one of the most important things they can do as council members.
“I’ve been dreaming of this moment for 4 1/2 years,” she said of meeting the Japanese delegates.
City council member Harmony Rutter told the delegates she hopes many Sequim and Shiso City students will continue to travel through the program.
During a tour of the Sequim-Shiso City Friendship Garden, Petit said Tomita was impressed that council meetings include both public comment and youth representatives as they do not do that in Japan, and those are elements he wants to discuss with his local officials.
This was Ishihara’s first time abroad and Tomita’s second visit to Sequim. He first accompanied then-Mayor Katsu Touji in October 2010.
Tomita was appointed Shiso City deputy mayor on May 28, 2021, and reappointed four years later.
Petit said there were a lot of new elements to Sequim to see since 2010, including the Sequim Civic Center.
Asked about his impression of Sequim, Tomita said the city is very open and wide, and more than he expected, but what stood out most were the people.
“They’re so friendly and open and I just feel so welcomed by their warmth,” he said. “And that, to me, the involvement of people in the community, I can feel so strongly here.”
Tomita said he wants Sequim residents to know how much the partnership means to Shiso City’s people.
“It’s really important that the friendship continues to be strengthened between us and that we really appreciate the friendship,” he said.
“And at a time when there seems to be (various) conflicts going on in our world, it’s important for us to even just have a small amount of positivity that we can bring into making the world a better place. That would be great.”
The Sequim-Shiso City Sister City Association meets at 1:30 p.m. the second Tuesday of each month in the Sequim Civic Center’s Burkett Community Room, 152 W. Cedar St.
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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. He can be reached by email at matthew.nash@sequimgazette.com.
