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The latest outreach from Japan aimed at boosting its economy and its citizens’ international competency has landed at two Coquitlam high schools.

Japan, eager to expose its traditionally homogeneous society to global contact before the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, is starting with its youth.

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Last month, students from the Nakatsu high school in the Gifu prefecture (close to Nagoya, Japan’s third-largest metro area) visited Coquitlam’s Gleneagle and Centennial secondary schools as part of an extensive exchange program.

The visit marks one of the first instances the program (called the Kakehashi Project) has touched down in Metro Vancouver, and local Japanese officials are hoping the experience will both enrich the international experience of its youth and familiarize Canadian students with Japan’s people and culture, as a way to entice further contact.

“Japan is an island country. It’s quite hard to have an opportunity to speak English or to have exchanges with people of other cultures,” said Tonomo Kobayashi, an English teacher with Nakatsu who has led several Kakehashi exchanges in the past. “If we had a chance to go abroad, it would be a precious opportunity. We have to open our mind to the world.”