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Japanese and Palo Alto officials celebrated Palo Alto's newest Sister City, Tsuchiura, with an international toast Monday afternoon in a ceremony at the Lucie Stern Community Center.

Japanese Consul General Yasumasa Nagamine and Tsuchiura Mayor Kiyoshi Nakagawa joined Palo Alto Mayor Peter Drekmeier, Councilwoman Yoriko Kishimoto and other Palo Altans at the 4 p.m. event.

Tshuchiura is the sixth Palo Alto Sister Cities in a program that dates back to 1963. The others include Palo, Leyte, Philippines; Oaxaca, Mexico; Enschede, Netherlands; Linkoping, Sweden; and Albi, France.

The Monday ceremony officially completed the process initiated by the Palo Alto City Council last March, when the Weekly reported the following story by Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner (uploaded to Palo Alto Online March 23, 2009):

Palo Alto, say konnichiwa to your newest sister.

Her name is Tsuchiura, and she boasts more than 140,000 residents, an annual fireworks festival, a thriving fish-processing industry and a museum dedicated to Japanese navy pilots.

The bond between Palo Alto and Tsuchiura was forged Monday night, when Palo Alto entered into a "sister city" alliance with Tsuchiura. About an hour prior to the City Council meeting, Tsuchiura's governing body held its own morning meeting in which it initiated approval of the sister-city relationship.

But the two cities weren't complete strangers even before Monday's meeting. In 1993, a local parent arranged an exchange program between Palo Alto and the Niihari village in Japan. Since that time, 168 Japanese students from the region (which is about 40 miles north of Tokyo) have visited Palo Alto in 15 different visits and 130 Palo Alto students returned the favor. In 2006, Niihari merged with Tsuchiura, which then adopted the exchange program.

Tsuchiura became the sixth city to enter into a sister-city alliance with Palo Alto. The others are Palo, Leyte, Philippines; Oaxaca, Mexico; Enschede, The Netherlands; Linkoping, Sweden; and Albi, France.

The relationships are more than just symbolic. In recent years, Palo Alto students have held fundraisers to raise money for such causes as a child-care center in Oaxaca and an education-resource center in Palo, Philippines.

At the same time, families from Palo Alto's sister cities have hosted hundreds of local students during trips abroad, welcoming jazz bands and orchestras from local schools into their homes. Palo Alto families have hosted foreign students in return.

On Wednesday, a contingent of Japanese middle-school students from eight different Tsuchiura schools toured Palo Alto City Hall before heading out to explore Stanford University and shop at the Stanford Shopping Center.

The group was led by Keiko Nakajima, who teaches Japanese at Jordan and Jane Lathrop Stanford middle schools in Palo Alto. Nakajima helped facilitate the alliance and noted that both Palo Alto and Tsuchiura now have about a hundred host families.

Greg Betts, interim director of Palo Alto's Community Services Department, said the sister-city program makes it easier for local students to travel abroad and strengthens their understanding of other cultures.

"It's really nice to introduce a personal connection," Betts said. "Rather than students in schools just learning a language, it's nice for them to have an opportunity to actually be able to practice that language abroad."

On Monday, the council lauded Nakajima for her efforts and welcomed Supervisor Masahiko Konoshita from Tsuchiura City Board of Education to Palo Alto. With dozens of Japanese and American students in attendance, Mayor Peter Drekmeier presented Konoshita with a book on Palo Alto history and praised the new sister-city alliance, calling it "a wonderful experience for us all."

Bowing politely, Konoshita said he was grateful for the city's warm reception.

"I wish to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been involved in this from the bottom of my heart," Konoshita said in Japanese, with Palo Alto Councilwoman Yoriko Kishimoto translating. "I'm looking forward to many years of deep exchange between Palo Alto and Tsuchiura."

The first two Sister Cities were adopted with support from Neighbors Abroad, a Palo Alto-based volunteer-run organization that since 1963 has sponsored Sister City programs. It also runs a cultural-exchange program for high school students in which Palo Alto students spend a month in Oaxaca or Palo and are immersed in that culture while living with a family there, according to Marion Mandell, vice-president of the Oaxaca program. The student from that family then lives with the family of the Palo Alto student for a month.

"They even get so close they go to each others' weddings," Mandell said.

Other exchange programs are run by the cities or other sponsoring groups.