BARRHEAD - Very few friendships can say they have endured for more than three decades as Barrhead and Tokoro, Japan have.
The two communities have had a relationship since 1991, after they were twinned.
Last week, from March 7 to 14, the two communities celebrated their friendship in person for the first time in four years after a four-person delegation arrived in Barrhead, including two high school students, their teacher and an interpreter from Tokoro.
Since their twinning, 158 Tokoro High School students have visited Barrhead, and when teachers, chaperones, and interpreters are included, the number of visitors from the community is well over 200.
"Tokoro and Barrhead share many similarities, as Canada and Japan do," Town of Barrhead councillor and twinning committee chair Rod Klumph told an audience of about 30 during the March 10 friendship dinner at the Seniors' Drop-in Centre. "We are both democracies that value the rule of law, human rights, and the free market economy."
However, more important than that, he said, they have something more meaningful in common: they are both agricultural communities.
Tokoro students Ayane Matsubara and Maika Sawamukai explained that Tokoro is a community of about 4,500 people, with two grocery stores and three restaurants, in the Hokkaido province on one of Japan's northern islands. It is on the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk, near the Kamchatka Peninsula.
They added that in addition to its extensive agricultural activities, with the main crops being potatoes, onions, and wheat, Tokoro is also known for scallops, which are taken from the Sea of Okhotsk and then used to seed the nearby Lake Saroma.
Matsubara noted the area is also known for its curling, which was only introduced to the country in the early 1980s by famed Alberta curler Wally Ursuliak, who put on a series of curling clinics at the behest of the governor of Hokkaido.
Ursuliak is a member of the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame (he was inducted in 2006 in the curler and builder categories) and, in 1961, won the Brier (Canadian men's championship) and a world championship playing lead for Hector Gervais.
Tokoro High School English teacher Takahiro Nishiyama said he was pleased to have taken the first group of students after the pandemic.
He said he was also saddened that it would likely be his last trip to Barrhead, as he is leaving Tokoro at the end of the school year.
"I don't know when all the wars in the world will end or when COVID-19 will disappear," he said. But the one thing I know is that our relationship between Tokoro and Barrhead will continue."
It was also a sentiment expressed by interpreter Miwako Nakadai, who has visited Barrhead over a dozen times with different Tokoro delegations.
"The last few years have seen such unhappiness; they make the good things in life seem that much better, such as the friendship between our two towns," she said.
Nakadai added that she also hopes that a Barrhead delegation will revisit Tokoro. The only Barrhead delegation to visit Tokoro happened in the early 2000s.
"The last few years have seen such unhappiness; they make the good things in life seem that much better, such as the friendship between our two towns," she said, reiterating her wish that a Barrhead delegation would visit their nation soon as Tokoro residents are eager to repay the hospitality Barrhead residents have shown them. "Although there is e-mail and the Internet, they know nothing is better than a personal visit."
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