Six years after their last visit, a delegation from Tochigi City, Evansville’s sister city in Japan, is renewing family ties.
Six women and four men from the Tochigi City International Exchange Association will arrive April 21, launching a three-day tour of Evansville’s cultural and educational resources.
The delegation, which includes a businessman, a restaurateur, current and retired teachers, a retired engineer, a transportation worker and two homemakers, will meet members of the community at a public reception from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., April 23, in the atrium lobby of Old National Bank, on Riverside Drive.
It will be the sixth time a group from Tochigi City has visited Evansville since November 1998, when a delegation came to sign a friendship agreement with city representatives. Mayors from both cities signed the official Sister City agreement the following July, when Evansville played host to a 21-member group from Tochigi.
Since then, representatives from Japan have made three Evansville trips, the last in Dec. 2002, when members of the Tochigi Girls Choir and Orchestra arrived, participating in Evansville’s First Night New Year’s Eve celebration. Over a decade of sisterhood, representatives from Evansville, including three mayors, have made a total of eight trips to Tochigi City, including a concert tour by the Evansville Philharmonic Youth Orchestra in November 2002.
As part of this month’s visit, delegation members will tour The Victory, where the Tochigi City and Evansville Philharmonic Youth orchestras are scheduled to play a joint performance in September 2009.
Other stops on their tour will include Harrison High School, the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corporation’s Tech Center, the University of Evansville, the Evansville African-American Museum, the Koch Family Children’s Museum, the Evansville Museum, the Bower-Suhrheinrich Foundation Gallery, the Pagoda, Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel’s office and Old National Bank.
The April 23 reception at Old National will open with music by the Rhein Valley Brass Band leading into remarks by Mayor Wienzapfel and the Tochigi City delegates at 7 p.m.
The evening’s entertainment will feature performances by the Harlaxton Quartet, the USI Chorus, Evansville Dance Theatre and The Boom Squad.
And Old National Bank hosts “Quietude of a Gentle Culture,” an exhibition of photography by Mary Powelson and sculpture by Amy Musia, honoring Evansville’s sister city relationship with Tochigi City. The show, which opens Monday, will remain up through May 2 in Old National’s Wayne Henning Atrium.
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2008/apr/10/japanese-sister-city-visit-renews-family-ties-evan/
