City awaits Yonezawa officials, students

Visit will also bring dedication of city Japanese Peace Garden

MOSES LAKE — When they come to town next week, representatives from the Japanese city of Yonezawa may feel they've found a little piece of home on Alder Street.

With a series of stepping stones and a walking bridge overlooking a stream full of koi, a delegation of visitors from the Japanese city will get their first look at a garden that has been in the works since a relationship first began between the two cities almost a quarter-century ago.

Visitors from Moses Lake's sister city will be on hand for the dedication of Moses Lake's recently opened Japanese Peace Garden. The city opened the gates to the garden in May, but an official dedication has been scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Aug. 19 at the garden on 800 Alder Street.

The dedication will be a significant but small part of the Yonezawa visit, in what Moses Lake City Manager Joe Gavinski calls a "whirlwind" visit for the group. The visit has actually been broken into two parts, with Yonezawa students arriving Sunday, and their adult counterparts flying into Moses Lake Aug. 18. Both the adult and student groups will depart Aug. 21.

During their visit, the dignitaries and students will spend time at agriculture plants, touring City Hall and even traveling up to the Grand Coulee Dam. Plans have also been made for officials to visit the Grant County Fair and Rodeo, with the students stopping in at area museums and traveling to different sites throughout the county.

Paul Hirai has also been a center of the sister-city relationship over the years, and is a current board member on the Moses Lake Sister City Committee. He said that relationship has been based on people in each community going back and forth for visits. Those visits, Hirai said, have opened the eyes of council members and the Japanese who visit Moses Lake.

"By coming over here," Hirai said, "they can understand and visually see what we're doing in this country."

Included in the invited guests will be Yonezawa Mayor Sanjuro Abe, as well as representatives from the Yonezawa Chamber of Commerce and City of Yonezawa. Among the visitors will also be Yukio Seino and his son, who both work for the Yonezawa Press.

"Both have been very heavily involved in visitations in Yonezawa and Moses Lake," Gavinski said of the Seinos.

Visitors have come in both directions during the many visits, and students from Yonezawa have come each year for the exchange. Those students will spend a week with some of the same host families that had students just return from their visit to Yonezawa.

"I think the real focus of the sister city relationship is the student exchange," Gavinski said." That is really important because it sets you up for the future."

Big Bend Community College Foundation Executive Director Doug Sly said the crux of the visit will be the exchange of the students coming to stay with host families for the week. Sly is the president of the Moses Lake Sister City Committee. He said that in the 24-year history of the relationship, the bonds have been descended onto a second generation of visitors from Yonezawa.

"You can imagine after 24 years that there's quite a lot of friendships," Sly said.

That exchange has included trips on Japan Airlines jets and a visit from Miss Moses Lake each year. Sly has twice been to Yonezawa over the last quarter-century, and said it is hard to describe the changes half a world away. He describes the city as a mountainous one of approximately 100,000 people and one that it is very centered in tradition. The trip, he said, is a once in a lifetime experience. "You get to the other side of the world and you get to (look at) the moon," Sly said "And you wonder if that's the same moon you've been looking at all along."