On Saturday March 21st, 25 students and 4 teachers from our sister school, Myojo Gakuen, arrived from Tokyo.
This year’s visit was a very special one as 2026 celebrates 20 years of our connection to Myojo and our sister school relationship.
What a wonderful 10 days we enjoyed with our visitors joining our Woodend community.
This year’s group was the largest we have hosted and we had 25 fantastic host families, with many hosting for the first time. Our host families were super busy, enjoying 2 weekends, taking the students to many places around Adelaide and involving them in a wonderful family life.
Our teachers and classes were once again very welcoming and thoughtful in making our Japanese students feel so included.
The Welcome Assembly, held on Monday 23rd, was a great way to start their time here at Woodend. Celebrating Harmony Day as well, it was a super exciting start to tour visitors school life at Woodend. Myojo students were able to join the Yr 5/6 and Yr 6 classes on an excursion to the Central Market, visited a junior primary class, joined in a Technology lesson as well as being part of a class and experiencing day to day events. Students in our host classes were able to have a lesson taught to them by the Myojo students in their class with classes enjoying a Japan Quiz or fukuwarai game (a similar game to pin the tail on the donkey but with more parts to pin on!) or writing their names in Japanese using special ink pens. The students’ time at Woodend was jam packed!
The Farewell Assembly is always a wonderful show case of the Myojo students’ talents, and this year was no exception. We watched a wide variety of talents from taiko drummers to rubik’s cube and kendama stars, dancers, puppeteers and traditional Japanese dancers. What an exciting time it was! It was a great assembly and a lovely send off.
After 10 super busy days it was time to say goodbye following the assembly on Monday. The goodbyes are always a sad time but shows us that great friendships and bonds have been formed and the connections made are strong.
We are very grateful to all 25 host families. This year it was great to see new families join those families who have generously taken part in previous years. This great program could not happen without the support of all the wonderful host families. arigato~.
Thank you to everyone involved in the homestay program and we look forward to another great experience next year in 2027.
