BATH

As forecasters predict snow, a cherry blossom of sunshine floats into the city this weekend with a Japanese flair.

Part of the Bath Tsugaru Sister City Exchange Program, the idea is of Japanese Celebration Weekend is to promote an exchange of students in a partnership based on Bath’s shipbuilding history. It’s an event held every summer for the last 22 years.

Organizers gathered at the home of board member Kate Bussey recently to snack on spinach dip and sip Stella Artois as they put finishing touches on this weekend’s plans.

“A handful of us decided that (the exchange program) would be a good way to celebrate the relationship (with Tsugaru City),” said Deborah Patten, a Brunswick pediatrician and president of the nonprofit Sister City program.

A big part of the program is the Japanese dinner Saturday night at Bath Middle School.

Last year, “We didn’t really know what to expect. The dinner was sold out,” said Paula Price, a member of the Bath Tsugaru Sister City Exchange Program board. “We really hadn’t anticipated that many people and had to turn some people away.

“We were just so gratified by the response and that people were so enthusiastic,” she said.

Patten agreed. “I think the most popular event last year was the dinner followed by the Bowdoin Taiko drummers — and that is really the big keystone of our event this year.”

“Bath has an amazing and unusual history with this little town in Japan,” she said.

Shipwreck saviors

It’s a bond only extreme tragedy could forge.

In 1889, the Bath-built Cheseborough — a fullrigged, first class clipper owned by Arthur Sewall — was caught in a typhoon in the Sea of Japan, washing up on a shoal about a mile from Shariki, as Tsugaru City was known at the time.

Four crewmembers survived with the help of villagers, one of whom wrapped a sailor in her kimono to warm him as others ran 40 miles through sleet for a translator.

Every year since, Shariki villagers have held Buddhist and Shinto ceremonies in memory of those who died aboard the Cheseborough.

Eighty years later, a granite memorial was raised on the beach where the survivors washed ashore that tells the story of the Cheseborough.

In 1989, officials from Shariki traveled to Bath to propose a formal sister-city relationship that sparked a pact between the two cities and a formal bond between the state of Maine and Aomori Prefecture of Japan.

Soon after, the student exchanges began.

Home stay

The purpose of the student exchange is less about travel and tourism and more about continuing the friendship that began between Bath and Tsugaru City that fateful day in 1889.

“Part of the richness of the program is staying in somebody’s home in this beautiful little rural Japanese town on the northern coast,” Patten said. “For a while, the town of Shariki put a third of its city budget into the program, and they have had a full time international relations coordinator. That’s how important this is at their end.”

It’s also important in Bath, where students often come into the exchange program after their families host a Japanese student here.

That describes Bussey, whose sons — Alexander and Christopher Paulus — have traveled to Tsugaru City.

She tells the story of hosting a 14-year-old Japanese boy who frequently “disappeared” during his visit.

At the time, her father was dying. Bussey said she would often find the boy, who barely spoke English, sitting with her dad who was on a ventilator.

“It was just such an eyeopening experience, “Bussey said. “I mean, here we are without words to connect us and you find out you don’t really need them. He would sit there with my father watching (TV) like he was part of the family, like here he was, halfway around the world just hanging out with the grandfather,” Bussey said.

Whether interested in hosting a Japanese student or adult or in traveling to Japan, the group encourages attending an information night.

“The only cost of travel is the travel expense itself, because once you get there, it’s a home stay and the city pours a lot of resources into touring us,” Price said.

The exchange group often works together to raise money for travel expenses, which builds community among the group as well as offsetting the personal costs.

Priority is given to students in Regional School Unit 1 and Bath residents, but students from other communities can attend if space is available.

Alexander Paulus traveled to Tsugaru his seventh-grade summer. “The other side of the world was just a completely different experience,” he said.

“One morning for breakfast, I was greeted by a whole fish on my plate … the whole experience just opened my eyes to other cultures and now I want to see more and experience more.”

That openness and curiosity is what has kept Patten involved for 20 years.

Scholarship funds are raised in part through donations raised during Japanese Celebration Weekend.

“Really everything but the dinner is free to the public,” Price said. “But we have donation buckets. We want this weekend to be about raising awareness about the program. It’s not a fundraising event.”

Japanese Celebration Weekend begins tonight with a showing of the film “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” 7 to 9 p.m. at Patten Free Library, and continues throughout the weekend throughout the city.

For a full event schedule, visit www.bath-tsugaru.org.

rshelly@timesrecord.com