Sister Cities in Japan.

[phreadom]

I posted on this awhile back over on NNB, but I figured I'd share the post here as well as it relates to another discussion we're having about なっとう in another thread right now.

I recently remembered to look up information on the Japanese sister city to my home city of Muskegon Michigan here in the US.

http://www.muskegon-mi.gov/community/sister-city/

It turns out that our sister city is Omuta City, Japan. An industrial city in the southwest of the main Honshu island in Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cmuta,_Fukuoka

I also decided on a whim to look up Dustin's sister city, since I know the name of his town as well...

http://www.city.kelowna.bc.ca/CM/Page133.aspx

It turns out his town has a sister city as well! Kasugai, Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasugai,_Aichi

I wondered if I might try to get involved in something related to sister-city relationship building in the future. Something as a means of improving international relationships, as well as building my own experience with Japan.

Shidasan chat pointed out that we should keep in mind that some of our sister cities may have been hit by the Earthquake and Tsunami...

Shidasan is about to move from Germany to Birmingham Alabama, whose sister city is Hitachi in Ibaraki prefecture in Japan. They were hard hit by the Earthquake and Tsunami.

http://www.birminghamsistercities.com/japan/Japan.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi,_Ibaraki

It might be a good time to get in touch with your local sister city organization and see if there is any way you can help out your sister city in Japan with their recovery needs.

Thank you for pointing that out Shidasan.