Experience of Youth Exchange Student Enami from Japan at District 7210 Conference & End-of-Year Celebration, June 8, 2025

Hello, I'm Yuu. Today I'm going to present my memories of exchange year. First of all, let me introduce my home country. I'm from Wakai in Japan, and it's Wakai Gate in South. And it's near Osaka. I think many of you know Osaka. It's the second biggest city in Japan. It takes me an hour to go to Osaka by train from Okayama. Weather-wise, we have four seasons, and it's relatively long period of year. As for the geography, the land size of Japan is a little bit smaller than California state. We have Hokkaido, which is Wakai Gate, in the most north. And we have Okinawa, which is Wakai Gate, in the most south. In Hokkaido, it snows a lot. So we have some bad weather. Okinawa, we never snow. And there are people who think it's more culture of Japan. Here are Japanese food. I like sushi the best. But I think the most interesting food, Japanese food, is rice with raw egg. I know it sounds weird, but in Japan we can eat raw egg. And I like to eat this as breakfast before school. So delicious. We use public transportation a lot. Use bathtub every day. I like hot springs. It's called onsen in Japanese. I love to talk about Japanese school because it's very different to American school. And it's much more strict. We can't make schedule by ourselves. And we must be formal. Can't put backpacks on. Can't get nails done. No earrings. And no phone. No AirPods. And most of people go to school by bike. I do. And it takes 30 minutes to go to school. Students have to take turn going to the classroom the whole way back to school. Here are some pictures from Japan. That's my family, friends. And at the middle picture, it's in karaoke. And we love singing and hanging out at karaoke because it's so reasonable. And we can borrow the karaoke box. Can we give them? It's so reasonable. We go to the L.A. once a week. Now I'm hosted by River County. And we're going to bring a bicycle. I love Brenda so much. This is my first host family. Jim and Laura. And we have three kids. Alex, Dolly, Charlotte. They're so sweet. And I can hang out with them when it's event. Like Christmas, Halloween, or Birthday. My second host family is Greg and Gigi. And Wendy and Madeline. Gigi is my mother. And Madeline is my best friend from school. And I play volleyball with her. This is my third and last host family. Jared and Emma. And Ava and Harrison. Ava is also my favorite bandit. And they have a lot of cousins and big family. I love how we all get together at the event. It's so fun. I play volleyball and sports. I went to New York City with my host family. I got to visit Statue of Liberty in Times Square. I love Christmas. The present that I got. After Christmas, I went to Washington, D.C. with my first host family. I got to see Capitol. A lot of modern events. The museum. It's amazing. We went to Connecticut with my second host family. And Gigi and Gigi's friend. We all love the show called Gilmore Girls. Gilmore Girls is filmed in Connecticut. It was so much fun. We also went to see Yale University. It was my favorite memory of my exchange year. High school musical. We did ladies. It was so much work. But it was amazing memory. I'll never forget it. It's my first time doing drag. I did 100 meters in a row. I wasn't good at it. I was so scared. I had fun. This is my first and last and best prom ever. We don't have prom in Japan. It was precious memory. I felt so American. Lastly, this is one weekend. We had five Broadway weekends. The first time was in Brightman Community Camp. We spent outside. It was new experience. But it was so much fun. We could go to New York City twice. We went to see Broadway. We most probably enjoyed it. Lastly, thank you so much for supporting my exchange year and making it amazing. I'm grateful that I could be a part of Broadway Exchange today. This experience changed my life for the better. Thank you so much. Thank you.