Marina Karate Club member, Jayme Heyl, recently traveled to Culver City's sister city Kaizuka, Japan as part of an student exchange for members of the graduating Japanese Immersion program at El Marino Language School in Culver City. Jayme was one of eight students who have successfully completed the kindergarten through fifth grade Japanese Immersion program and have the distinction of being the very first graduating class at El Marino Language School. El Marino is a language magnet school of the Culver City Unified School District and is home for a popular Spanish Immersion program as well as the Japanese Immersion program that Jayme and other MKC'ers are enrolled in.

MKC'ers Karyn Heyl, Jack Sukimoto and Adam Prewett are currently enrolled in the El Marino Language School Japanese Immersion program.

Four members of the class were selected to participate in the two week trip to Kaizuka. Jayme and her travel-mates also took part in a three day mini-exchange/home-stay program with Nishiyamato Academy of California. Nishiyamato Academy is a private school for the children of Japanese nationals, and is located in Palos Verde.

El Marino and Nishiyamato are involved in many projects together in order to aid their respective students in learning each others languages and customs; for example, Jayme also is a member of El Marino's Niji Daiko group, an after-school Taiko (Japanese Drums) club. Recently, El Marino's Niji Daiko (Rainbow Taiko) group performed at Nishiyamato's summer festival.

The children, their teacher Ms. Alice Horiba and parent chaperone Patti Heyl flew from Los Angeles International Airport to the Kansai International Airport where they were met by representatives of the Kaizuka Board of Education. Upon arriving in Kaizuka, the group was broken up and distributed among individual host families for their two week stay. The children attended classes at the Kita Sho-gakko, as well as traveling to the cities of Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, Nara and Hiroshima to see first hand the country they have been learning about. To give the children the best opportunity to learn, they were kept isolated from their El Marino classmates where ever possible.

Jayme's knowledge of Japanese was put to the test as she was often called upon to be a spokes-person for the El Marino group during formal functions, like a dinner hosted by the Kaizuka Board of Education.

Jayme's future plans include returning to El Marino Language School as the first alumni teacher for the Japanese Immersion program.