By Nardo

Nardo (Clinard Smith, in the beige shirt on the right) was a student from Eastern High School when he joined our 2016 TOMODACHI US-Japan Youth Exchange Program. It was only after a random encounter many years later on the streets of DC that Nardo shared this poem he wrote about the enormous impact of his TOMODACHI experience.

I began my voyage yesterday.
Only fourteen hours have passed since I had left my home to travel to a realm far, far away.
I am now in the future of those that I love,
gradually descending from the clouds to bounce and roll across a long runway.
With my heart pulsating,
my fists clenching,
my legs bouncing,
and smiling from ear to ear,
I trade my wings for legs so that I may walk the foreign lands.
I have arrived.
My eyes have existed for fifteen years and I have never seen anything like this before.
A whole new world
with a whole new language,
living and breathing as an entirely different society.
My dreams come to reality as I take my first steps on Sakura’s soil.
I gaze directly into the blazing sun and imagine myself made into a manga.
Just setting foot here sets my soul at ease.
I see the blank sheet with the red dot and
I focus on it as it wildly flails in the air while attached it’s slender metal.
I’m existing in a timeline parallel to my own,
refining myself while looking back at my world’s past,
acquiring new mementos while remembering what I have left behind.
It is real.
I’m indeed far from home,
challenged to reside with
and encouraged to learn from
entities both alike and unlike.
I just can’t believe that I’m really here
at my desired place — 日本,
where everything is so perplexing.