I am in the center of the photo next to Chris and in the front left we have my host sister. In the summer of 2004 I participated in a student exchange through the Sister Cities program to Chino, Japan. I was the first person in 13 years of this exchange to speak some Japanese. This was great for me as I could talk to my host family and strangers and absorb more of the culture. For example, on our first day in Tokyo we went to a "one yen/one coin" store where everything was just 1 yen. We