MUSKEGON — It was only a coincidence that Muskegon Rotary Club exchange program coordinator Kristi Pawlak was able to connect with Japanese Reeths-Puffer exchange student Kyoka Tomoyama this year, but it was a happy one.
The trajectory of Pawlak’s life changed as a result of her being sent to Japan through the Rotary exchange program when she was a Mona Shores student; “I didn’t choose to go to Japan. Rotary chose Japan for me,” Pawlak said. The same was true for Kyoka this year. She said she would have chosen to go to Europe - her older sister did a year abroad in France - but it worked out that she was sent to the U.S.
Pawlak became immersed in Japanese culture on her visit. Her first host family didn’t live in Tokyo, but in a small countryside home where the bathroom was an outhouse. The family didn’t speak any English. She loved every minute of it.
“There were no cell phones or computers back then,” Pawlak said. “I had to face the challenge and meet the challenge. That made me a stronger person and more confident. I saw the world differently.”
When Pawlak came back, her mind was made up; she would study Japanese in college. Japan wasn’t yet the global economic force it is today, so there were hardly any such programs available in the Midwest. The only one of significance at the time, Pawlak said, was at the University of Michigan, but just as she had loved her time in the Japanese countryside, she didn’t want a big-school experience. Pawlak ended up at Wittenberg University, a small liberal arts college in Ohio. She later got her master’s and a Japanese teaching certification at Ohio State, which she said was the only school around at the time that certified K-12 Japanese education.
By the time Pawlak got that master’s, it was 1998 and Japan had become a known factor in business and economics in America. Learning Japanese was now a marketable skill. Pawlak benefited from the lack of supply of Japanese teachers, scoring a job offer before she even finished her education. She taught in Columbus, Toledo and the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel before accepting a position as a professor at the University of Toledo. She’s since moved back to the Muskegon area, teaching at both Grand Valley State (in person) and Toledo (online).
Pawlak joined Rotary after moving back, wanting to help facilitate others receiving the life-changing opportunity she got. While there are for-profit entities that are in the foreign exchange business as well, she appreciates Rotary’s offerings.
“We take care of them,” Pawlak said of exchange students. “We have host families open their homes. The only thing the kid pays for is their plane ticket and insurance. It’s an amazing program based on world peace and connections with youth. I also oversee American kids here in Muskegon and all the high schools here who want to do what I did and go abroad for a year.”
Among the things that make Rotary’s program different is that students are sent to three different host families during their stay whenever possible, to give them a broader view of American culture than if they only stayed with one. This created a brief period of uncertainty for Tomoyama when it took some time to find a third host family, but eventually the club procured one.
Pawlak’s role is to regularly check in with Rotary’s exchange students in the county, and Tomoyama is one of four this year (two are at North Muskegon and one is at Shores). However, despite the obvious commonality created by Pawlak’s Japanese experience, Pawlak has restrained herself from being as much help as she perhaps could be. After all, the whole point of the Rotary program is to fully immerse exchange students in a foreign culture. For example, Pawlak is not supposed to speak Japanese with Tomoyama, even though she’s obviously fluent and said she’d love to do so.
Tomoyama has certainly done her part to learn American high school life and has come across several differences she enjoys. In classes, she’s a fan of the more interactive style of learning that takes place in America. She said in Japan, high school classes are more like college classes are here, where the teacher gives lectures and students take notes. Here, she enjoys giving presentations and displaying her knowledge of the subject matter outside of tests.
Out of the classroom, Tomoyama is the captain of her softball team in Japan. She wanted to play the sport here from the start, but with softball not taking place until spring, it was necessary to find other activities. Despite having never done either before, she picked two other sports - JV sideline cheer in the fall and basketball in the winter. Playing on the freshman team in the latter, Tomoyama learned one piece of American culture she very much likes.
“When I made a mistake (in) basketball or softball, like if I can’t catch a ball...My teammates always told me, ‘Good job.’ or ‘You’ve got it,’” Tomoyama said. “It’s very different...Japanese people, most of the people, are shy. They don’t like cheering.”
Tomoyama finally got to participate in her favorite sport this week with softball tryouts opening, and she was pleased to learn she’d made the Rockets’ JV team.
Perhaps more importantly, Tomoyama, who said she did not have a future career in mind when she came to America, said she has discovered a passion for world history, especially enjoying those classes, and would love to learn more about it going forward.
That sort of thing is exactly what Rotary hopes to hear. Pawlak said she consistently hears from students who get a taste of world travel from their exchange experience and itch for more after. Count Tomoyama’s sister among them; after her year in France, Kyoka said, she later spent six months traveling the world by herself and visiting over 30 countries.
In an additional coincidental twist, Pawlak will be meeting Tomoyama’s family when she visits Tokyo in June. She said she is taking a Toledo student she’s long privately taught to the country for a few days and asked Tomoyama if her family would be willing to host them.
“While she’s here in the Reeths-Puffer area, I’ll be in her town in Japan meeting her parents,” Pawlak said. “(My student) will go to Kyoka’s high school for two days. It’s a small world.”
For Kyoka, whose mom and sister had to talk her into going abroad in the first place, the experience she’s had in the U.S. has inspired her, and she hopes it can inspire others to pursue ambitious goals too.
“If you (are thinking that you want to) do something, you should do it,” Tomoyama said. “If you want to do something you should do it now...If you’re waiting, it’s too late.”
