‘My family, my friends are all safe.’

FALLS VILLAGE — Shiho Tamaki, a Japanese exchange student attending Housatonic Valley Regional High School this year, had some anxious moments last month when the first massive earthquake and tsunami hit Japan.The 17-year-old senior hails from Kamagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo and part of the greater Tokyo area.She said she couldn’t get through by telephone for a couple of days, “but my family, my friends, are all safe.”As the news broke, she watched on television and felt a strange sense of unreality.“I couldn’t understand what was happening. Is this a movie?”Natural disasters aside, Shiho has had a good stay in the United States, although she said she had some initial difficulties adapting when she arrived in Connecticut — she is staying with Elizabeth Jakupciak and John Sutterlin of Kent — and started school in September.“I had trouble with American names,” she said in accented but perfectly coherent English. “‘How’s it going?’ ‘What’s up?’ I didn’t understand these.”In Japan, she explained, English language students study grammar and vocabulary, but don’t practice much conversation.Plus, in the United States, “everybody speaks fast.”She has another year of secondary school ahead of her in Japan, and then she plans to first go to college and then become a teacher of Japanese language, culture and history.Asked how school at home compares to school here, she said that Japanese kids study harder than their American counterparts. And she is somewhat bemused by American tests.“Here they ask for opinion,” on tests, while in Japan the emphasis is on learning — and memorizing — facts.In Japan, for example, students know the significant dates of World War II — particularly those of the two atomic bombings and Japan’s surrender in August 1945.“In August there are a lot of TV shows about the war. I was surprised not to see something here.”She enjoys art and chorus, and is intrigued by metal technology (i.e. shop).“I can’t learn that in Japan.”Perhaps the biggest difference in daily life is the transportation problem. In urban Kamagawa, “I can go everywhere myself, on the bus, the train or walking. Here you need a car.”She returns home after the Housy graduation ceremony in June.“I’m excited to go back,” she said. “And a little sad too.”She plans to keep in touch, by email if nothing else. “It’s a 13-hour difference,” she said. “Hard to phone, hard to Skype.”