Olivia Jeffcoat, from Del Norte High School in Crescent City, Calif., eats lunch with Takata High School students Risa Sugawara, left, and Nanase Yamaguchi in Rikuzentakata, Japan, on Feb. 23, 2016. (Ko Sasaki/For The Washington Post)

It would have been hard to come up with two places that were better matched: both small, Pacific Ocean coastal towns, both proud of their majestic trees, both far from a metropolis and little known even in their own countries.

But Crescent City, Calif., and Rikuzentakata, Japan, were brought together not by design but by nature.

The tsunami that devastated this part of Japan’s northeastern coast almost five years ago ricocheted back to wash ashore a day later on the northwestern coast of the United States, inundating the harbor and destroying several dozen boats in Crescent City, a 20-minute drive from the Oregon line.

Two years later, another souvenir from the Japanese tsunami arrived: Kamome, a small blue-and-white boat whose name means “sea gull.” The boat had been used for marine science classes at Rikuzentakata’s Takata High School but had been swept away in the tsunami, which claimed the lives of 22 students and a teacher and leveled the town.

[How is Fukushima’s cleanup going five years after its meltdown? Not so well.]

Ben Slayton arm-wrestles with Takata High’s Kaito Kanno. (Ko Sasaki/For The Washington Post)

As it was washed out to sea, the little boat flipped upside down; during its long journey, it grew foot-long barnacles before coming to rest on the beach near Crescent City.

After the Japanese characters reading “Takata High School” on Kamome’s side had been deciphered, students from Del Norte High School in Crescent City set about cleaning the boat and getting it back to its owners across the Pacific.

Students from both coasts are now following in Kamome’s wake.

Eight Del Norte students, along with their principal and some local Rotarians, are spending this week in the shiny new Takata High School complex on a hill overlooking the ocean — the original buildings were destroyed in the March 11, 2011, disaster.

The eight are members of a “junior Rotary” club at Del Norte High and had to apply to be selected for the exchange, which is funded by the U.S.-Japan Foundation. This is the third year of the initiative, and several of the students on this year’s trip are reuniting with Japanese students they welcomed to California last year.

“These are very special ties,” said Hiroki Suzuki, Takata High’s vice principal. “The boat was covered with dirt and shells, and most people who found it would have chucked it away. But these people kindly cleaned it, realized it must have been something important and then returned it to us.”

The American students are learning about Japan, disaster preparedness and how much they have in common with their Japanese peers. They have been playing basketball and practicing the martial art of kendo together, taking English class and doing Japanese calligraphy together, eating bento-box lunches with chopsticks together.

Visiting American student Samantha Fuller tries her hand at the Japanese martial art of kendo with Carolyn Cochran, a Del Norte student. (Ko Sasaki/For The Washington Post)

[Gallery: Now and then in Japan]

“The sister-school idea is not new, but this is a really unique situation,” said Randy Fugate, Del Norte High’s principal. “Everyone we have met has suffered a loss of home or family or friendship. But there is a strength here, a focus on rebuilding, and on rebuilding better and stronger. It chokes you up.”

On the surface, the students could hardly have looked more different. The American high school students seemed straight out of central casting, including several tall, athletic young men in jeans and T-shirts and pretty young women with long hair and track pants emblazoned with “I love cheerleading.”

The Japanese students were all in uniforms of blue blazers and ties during class but changed into regulation tracksuits for gym class and regulation coveralls for cooking class.

But the differences went beyond appearance.

The Americans learned to sleep on futons on the floor and eat rice with miso soup for breakfast — although by their fourth day in Japan they were talking about going to In-N-Out Burger when they get back to San Francisco on Saturday.

In English class, the Japanese students were shocked when Garrett Galea, a 17-year-old junior at Del Norte, said that most of his classmates drove themselves to school. Japanese teens cannot drive until they are 18, and even then they continue taking public transportation to school.

The Americans, meanwhile, grappled with the strict rules on wearing only “indoor shoes” inside the school buildings and laughed as they lined up with their Japanese counterparts to bow and say thank you to their teachers at the end of class. (“We expect you to do this when you get back, too,” Fugate quipped.)

Plus there was the language barrier, but it wasn’t anything that the language of teenagers everywhere — selfies and giggling about their love lives — couldn’t overcome. When in doubt, Galea would boom out an “Ikimashou!” — “Let’s go!” — and everyone would fall about laughing.

“It’s good to listen to their English. I don’t really understand much, but it’s fun to try,” Yuka Kamagai, 16, said during a cooking class held inside a huge ­factory-like building.

The Japanese students taught the Americans how to make melon bread, a kind of double-

layered bun with sugar on top. The locals were alternately amused and shocked at the Americans’ poor rolling-pin skills.

[Roll over, male sushi chefs. In Japan, women challenge tradition.]

Then the Japanese students handed out chopsticks and opened tins of sardines and mackerel that they had canned themselves. The Americans looked skeptical but declared the fish delicious.

One thing that rarely came up was the reason the exchange was happening in the first place: the disaster. “We’re focusing on the positive, unless they bring it up first,” said Carolyn Cochran, who at 15 was the youngest of the group.

Teachers say that the students at the school, which has two counselors on site, have proved amazingly resilient in the face of a disaster that cost many of them homes, family members, friends. The U.S. connection helps.

“These kinds of cultural exchanges are really important,” said Kingo Murakami, who teaches Japanese literature at the school. “Young people are much more future-oriented. We adults lost everything that belonged to the past, but the children can make history from now on.”

The exchange program was also making a huge impression on the American students, most of whom had never been abroad before.

“They’re just so outgoing. We haven’t met a pessimistic person yet,” said Chai Thao, a 17-year-old senior who had been learning Japanese on his own and was helping translate.

Ben Slayton, a sophomore, added, “I love how they can see the good in everything.”

Even by their second day at Takata High, the Del Norte students were talking about how they could be more respectful and helpful to others at home, habits they had encountered in Japan. They were also discussing forming a “Takata High School club” to ensure that the exchange continues and the students keep in touch.

But first, they had a home stay and a temple visit and some local shopping to do, as well as food to prepare for their farewell party. They had a Californian specialty planned for their new Japanese friends: chicken taco salad.

Yuki Oda contributed to this report.

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