Even though their classrooms are hundreds of miles apart, kids at Tsuchi Middle School in Kashiwa City, Chiba Prefecture, and students at the University of Guam can get together and chat during class every week. How do they do it? By using a video conference system they talk to each other on TV, which allows them to make new friends and learn about each other's countries without even leaving their classrooms. Maripaz Nogoy, a student at Guam University, says, "It was like they were just next door."

This program was organized last October by teachers at the two schools in order "to bring the real world into the classroom," says Connell Wayne Regner, an English teacher at Tsuchi Middle School. Since most people outside of Asia are sleeping while Japanese students are in school, it was difficult to find people who were awake to talk with them.

Fortunately, Peter Melyan, a Japanese language professor at Guam University, was thrilled to participate, saying, "It will also give my students a chance to study Japanese." And since Guam, an island in the Pacific Ocean south of Japan, shares the same time zone as Japan, it was a perfect match.

Some people might think it's strange to have an exchange program between middle school students and university students, but it's working out really well. The university students and the kids at Tsuchi Middle School have only just started learning Japanese and English, respectively, so it's a lot of fun for them to try out what they've learned on each other. Says one student at Tsuchi Middle School, "It was fun talking to a foreigner for the first time. I want to improve my English and meet them for real someday."

The kids at the middle school have also had fun teaching their faraway friends origami. This idea was the brainchild of Megumi Watanabe, who was in eighth grade at the time. She wanted to teach origami to the students in Guam, "because it's part of Japanese culture." The students in Guam often gave shouts of joy when they successfully completed their origami.

The students are also exchanging e-mails with each other, and some of those in Guam have even created web pages in Japanese. With the help of technology, the world has become the kids' playground.

Photos: The Mainichi Chugakusei Shimbun