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Seek funds from businesses to:

1. Create a host family exchange.

2. Fund travel or partial travel (scholarships) for citizens who wish to visit Yamagata.

3. Bring goods back from Yamagata to sell at local Yamagata festivals.

Develop research and education committees:

1. find ways to fund travel to Yamagata

2. Discover creative ways to relate to our sister city.

3. Educate our community about Yamagata.

Find out what Longmont does with their exchanges with Chino.

1. E.G. buying a dress rehearsal of muscial and selling tickets.

We thought this might be a good time to examine how these ideas might be implemented. Many of these could be done as "exchanges" with similar activities in Yamagata:

1. One could bring some kind of artist, from Yamagata to perform her. For example, a Soba noodle maker or a Shakuhachi player for International Shakuhachi festival in July. The ground rules seem to be as follows. Yamagata has a budget provided by the city government for sister-city activities. If the cultural or economic case can be made to Yamagata City government, they may pay the transportation costs for the person. All we have to do is arrange the person's venue (e.g. display noodle making in a suitable location), find homestays, and feed them. How easy to bring something novel and exciting to Boulder!

2. To travel to Yamagata as a representation/tourist and enjoy the Japanese culture. The easiest way is to wait for invitations from Yamagata and just pay one's way. We have have a Japanese-American travel company (John and Yoyoi Shaw) as members. They are skilled at finding low-cost ways to visit Japan. When we travel as part of official functions we receive many amenities at little, or no, cost.

3. One can (on rare occasions) obtain partial airfare support form Yamagata if one is part of a cultural production such as last year's production of Peter and the Wolf.

4. An emerging possibility is to travel to Yamagata as representatives of Boulder businesses desiring to see products in Japan. Many Boulder businesses sell products in Japan. Yamagata City is planning a Boulder festival in July 1998.

5. also, there are organizations which award grants for activities like ours. If you are interested in pursuing a specific activity, you might want to contact Vicki Anderson to see what ideas she has.

6. We can sponsor fun-raising events. We could host an event in support of a specific program, for example, student exchanges.

7. Finally, I'm sure there are fun, exciting things to do that we haven't thought of - and that they will appear as we work with our colleagues in Yamagata.