Catonsville High Welcomes Japanese Visitors

Catonsville High students last week played host to visitors from halfway around the world.

The Catonsville Times reports the school is hosting 20 students from Yokosuka Meiko High School in Kanagawa, Japan, who on Thursday held a tea ceremony to thank their hosts.

The students are visiting music, physical education and Japanese language classes at Catonsville, and will visit a school in the Washington area on the last day of their trip to the United States, according to the paper. The students arrived on March 19 and leave Thursday.

"The school showed us around a lot of different types of classes," Yumiko Ishida, an English teacher from Yokosuka Meiko, told the Times. "The way we handle curriculum, the way we teach, it's very different."

The two schools have been sister institutions for three decades, according to the Times and the visit, another teacher told the paper, gives students a chance to practice real-world English.