Four members of Children's Express, an international children's wire service based in the United States, came to Japan in early December to invite Japanese children to join their reporting activities.

The four met many Japanese children in Tokyo and led a training session for 20 prospective reporters, such as by staging mock interviews. This was in preparation for a new Tokyo bureau for Children's Express, scheduled to open in January 2001.

Children's Express was established in 1975 and gained international recognition the following year when it beat out other newspapers and TVstations in learning who the vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic Party would be in the 1976 U.S. presidential election. Its reporter happened to be on the same elevator with Jimmy Carter and heard him mention the name of his running mate while covering the Democratic Party convention.

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the news agency has 750 child reporters between 8 and 18 years old who work after school at seven bureaus in the United States and Britain. The news stories they cover are distributed though the New York Times wire service.

Children's Express staff members under 13 years old engage in interviewing and reporting while the older kids edit and train new members. During the training session held in Tokyo's Shibuya, 20 Japanese children were divided into four groups and produced reports on such issues as school life and sex discrimination at the office. The session was carried out without adults. "We have to solve problems on our own if there are no adults," said 16-year-old Children's Express member Terence Minorbrook.

Chihiro Uryu, a sixth grader at Nakamachi Elementary School in Nerima Ward, Tokyo, who participated in the session, said, "I thought the members were great. I want to go to the United States next year to cover the U.S. presidential election."

Other members talked about the importance of children voicing their own opinions, saying, "Joining this organization has made me feel that I can make a difference in the world," adding, "a wire service provides us with a great opportunity to express ourselves."

Zane Selkirk, 17, another Children's Express member, said he thinks that a bureau in Tokyo would give the agency a more international angle. "We would like to incorporate Japanese viewpoints into our stories, which are more or less inclined to the United States at the moment."

Under the plan, Children's Express will choose the Japanese reporters in October 2000 and train them prior to opening a bureau in January 2001.

Photo: Local kids meet with Children's Express members in Shibuya, Tokyo. (Asahi Shogakusei Shimbun)