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Fukushima Friends UK (FF) Brief History

May 2012: Kumiko Akatsuka started a letter exchange between one pair of individual pen-friends in Fukushima Japan and London with help of Mitsuko Yoshida and Galina Peklich.

October 2012: Kumiko received 24 letters written by Shaftesbury Abbey School year 4 children from the late Chris Line (teaching Assistant) and passed them to Japanese teacher, Ms Fumie Kanno with help from Kazuko Iwase. This group had lasted 3 years.

May 2013: Kumiko, Machiko Watanabe, Yuka Lunn in London and Hiroko Ootake in Fukushima launched Fukushima Friends UK and set up a website.

September 2014: FF ran five workshops of the ‘Fukushima Inclusive dance Project’ in Fukushima Japan with Gemma Coldicott of SLiDE (inclusive dance group).

March 2015: Fukushima Friends UK became a registered charity (1160996). The first trustees were Kumiko, Forum Mithani, Machiko Watanabe, Mary Reeve and Yuka Lunn.

July/ August 2016: FF ran two a week ‘2016 ‘Summer English Lesson Project’ in Fukushima, Japan; funded by The PINE Foundation.

March 2017: FF organised its first fundraising event, the Epsom Japan Festival.

July 2017: FF ran a one-day reunion of the 2016 Summer English Lesson Project students.

December 2017: FF was again awarded a grant by The PINE Foundation, this time for a 2018 Homestay project. Preparation is in progress (please see article 2).

ふくしまフレンズＵＫ

Fukushima Friends UK

No. 6

Newsletter

January 2018

2017 was a challenging year for FF but with all the help and friendship of volunteers, supporters and

participants we are thriving and progressing on to the next stage in

2018. I am truly grateful to you all from my the bottom of my heart.

Thank you.

Kumiko Akatsuka

Chair and general coordinator

Fukushima Friends UK

A happy and peaceful New Year to you all

Last October it struck me that it was five years since I received 24 letters written by year 4 children

from the Shaftesbury Abbey School and then went to Fukushima, Japan, wondering how I could find

partners. Since then so many things have happened:

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Table of contents

1. Yuko’s school visit in Fukushima

2. The reunion and 2018 Homestay Project

3. New pen-friend schemes

4. New trustee, Emma Stonehouse

5. New coordinator, Fiona Stamp

6. Translating volunteer, Marcus Wilson

7. Chris Line poetry competition

1. Yuko’s school visit to Fukushima

Yuko Leece, our Dorset coordinator, visited Aono Primary School in April and enjoyed school lunch with

all teachers and the eight pupils. This small and lovely school is going to be closed next March, so her

visit meant a special thank you from FF for their participation in our project. The children will move to

Samegawa Primary School and we are hoping that this school will join our project.

Yuko also visited Akogashima Primary School and met year 3 pupils and the teacher, Mrs Akiko

Shishito, who looks after the pen-friends. She took souvenirs of British coins, stickers and sweets, and

the children were very curious and pleased with these from the country of their pen-friends.

Yuko said, ‘I was so happy to meet children of both schools. They were all so gentle and their eyes

were shining!’

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2. The reunion and 2018 Homestay Project

The reunion in July at Kotoku primary school was a

joyful and successful gathering which helped the

children who participated in 2016 English Summer

school with their learning, as the report on our website

details. We are thankful to Mr Yoshio Yabuki, the head

teacher of Kotoku Primary School for his kind support.

The FF team of Fukushima is led by Mr Toshihiro

Kurosawa and has done an excellent job. The other

members were our local coordinator, Fumie Kanno,

Syuhou Saitou and Hiroko Ootake. Mr Masahiro

Shishito, a teacher at Kotoku primary school, also kindly assisted and our supporter Mrs Chieko Nozaki,

who is also a teacher, recruited two experienced Fukushima resident English teachers. Another

important person was Fukushima resident and English teacher Fiona Stamp who helped the reunion as

a volunteer and is now helping FF in many ways as you can read in article 5.

Through the reunion we asked children about the potential Homestay project and four girls were keen

to be part of it. Mr Kurosawa agreed to lead the children to the UK and Mrs Cheryl Roberts, Howden

school and 2016 Summer school teacher, offered to organise homestay with her Japanese club

students’ families in Howden, North-Riding of

Yorkshire. It took us nearly four months to plan in

detail and The Pine Foundation awarded the grant for

the project plan on 1st December. We have already

purchased the flight tickets and booked hotels near

airports. Mrs Roberts has already found 3 host

families. In July 2018 the four girls from Fukushima

will spend time together with the Japanese club

students, sightseeing and visiting museums etc while

learning English language and culture and, we hope,

establishing lasting friendships.

3. New Pen-friend schemes

Good news! Two new schemes have started.

Our new volunteer Fiona Stamp (article 5) introduced Hokushin Junior High School to our pen-friend

project. We matched them with Howden School (secondary school) in North Riding of Yorkshire. There

are 26 participants are altogether. Fiona is helping with the two schools and has also found another

potential candidate in Fukushima to join pen-friend scheme. It is hard to recruit in both countries, but

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she may have found the partner in the UK too. Emma Stonehouse our new trustee (article 4) also has a

contact in Wales who are interested in the pen-friend project. We

will report on these in the next newsletter.

Our longstanding participants, Kotoku Primary School and The

Minster Junior School, also re-joined with new groups of pupils. Year

4 children from The Minster have sent 25 Christmas cards with self-

introductions to Kotoku Primary school. Children on both sides were

excited.

4. New Trustee, Emma Stonehouse

I've been involved with Fukushima Friends for around four years now. Initially as a volunteer translator

of penfriend letters and the Fukushima Friends newsletter, but, as of mid 2017, I became a trustee for

the charity and took on the role of secretary. I've been passionate about all things Japanese for over 20

years. Having studied the language at university, I've

since lived in Japan twice - once as an exchange student

in Yokohama and then as a Co-ordinator for International

Relations in Hiroshima prefecture. Choosing to study

Japanese was one of the best decisions I've ever made. It

has taken me on an amazing adventure. I've built a career

around it and made some wonderful friends.

It has been fantastic to watch Fukushima Friends grow

into an established charity over the past four years, and

I'm very excited that plans are coming together for our

first homestay experience next summer. This is something

particularly close to my heart, as my own interest in Japan

was sparked by a penfriend exchange and homestay that

my family hosted over 25 years ago. I hope the experience will forge lasting friendships and inspire all

those involved to continue language learning.

I'm currently living in Istanbul, taking a career break to look after our two young children, but I

manage to fit in the odd spot of freelance translation. I've yet to master Turkish, though I'm told it's

grammatically very similar to Japanese so it may be my challenge for 2018. Along with tracking down

good sushi!

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5. New coordinator in Fukushima, Fiona Stamp

I first got involved with Fukushima Friends UK when my family in

England visited the Epson Japan Festival in March 2017. They

passed on my details and I was excited to get involved. I work in

various schools in Fukushima city, so I was happy to set up a pen

-friend scheme with one of the biggest junior high schools. The

students are very happy to make friends with teenagers in

England.

During the summer of 2017, I also took part in the Fukushima

Friends UK Summer school reunion. It was a lot of fun to teach

the enthusiastic students English. They were interested in

learning about UK culture. They particularly enjoyed playing

cricket!

In October, I started a Fukushima Friends UK Instagram account. The account features a mixture of

photos taken at FF’s events and photos taken around the prefecture. The Instagram account shows both

the good work of the charity and what a beautiful and lovely place Fukushima is. The account currently

has over 100 followers and I hope it can continue growing.

https://www.instagram.com/fukushima_friends_uk/

6. Translating volunteer, Marcus Wilson

I have volunteered as a translator for Fukushima Friends UK for just under a year, having been

introduced to their work during a language fair that I attended

in London during Autumn 2016.

However, I actually live in Manchester, and studied Japanese at

the University of Leeds and at Fukuoka University.

I find translating the children’s letters to be fun and challenging.

It is amusing to see the things they like to talk about, but the

similarities in their interests are also quite remarkable.

I am humbled to have the opportunity to facilitate cultural

exchange between Japanese and British children. I remember

how excited I was during my school days, to have pen-friends

who were based in other parts of the UK and sometimes abroad as well. It was a great way of finding out

how people lived outside my own neighbourhood.

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7. Chris Line poetry competition

In July 2017 we received the sad and unexpected news that Chris Line left this world. As you can read in

the FF brief history on the first page of this newsletter, without his help FF would never have taken off in

the way it has. We miss him very much.

We would like to organise a poetry competition among our pen-friends as a tribute to him. His wife, Ms

Alison Strang gave us a permission to call it ‘The Chris Line Poetry Competition’. The themes will be

‘friend’ and ‘letter’. Ms Strang also mentioned that her family is very happy about this and would like to

donate the Prize. We are grateful to her and her family for their generosity and will remember Mr Line’s

contribution to our work as long as FF exists.

Thank you Mr Line. Because of you, many hundreds of children have had unforgettable experiences

befriending children from far away!

We hope that you enjoyed reading our important new members’ profiles as well as

our progress. FF has been blessed by talented and goodhearted people.

We are now looking for fundraising volunteers and supporters. Please get in touch

with us if you have any innovative ideas for fundraising events. Thank you for

reading and your interest in our work.

www.fukushimfriends.org.uk

Registered Charity Number:1160996

Illustrations by Makiko Yaginuma

Calligraphy by Chisato Hashizume

The letter exchanges are a great way for both the British and Japanese children to learn about life in

another part of the world, and will undoubtedly ignite their interest in each other’s countries and

cultures.

Within the context of the legacy of the Tōhoku Earthquake, the work that Fukushima Friends UK does is

vital for reminding the world that the children of Fukushima still have a voice, and that they want to play

and have fun like children elsewhere in the world.

I am endlessly grateful to Kumiko Akatsuka and everyone else at the charity for allowing me to play a

part in building this Anglo-Japanese connection, and I hope that my small efforts will help these children

to make life-long friends.