Students enrolled in Japanese language classes at Eau Claire Memorial and Eau Claire North high schools were granted the chance to travel to Japan for two weeks to help clean up after the 2011 tsunami. The 23 students left March 3 on the 14-hour plane ride to Tokyo, said Memorial High School partnership coordinator Kristin Craker. The students and chaperones will be staying with host families in Tokyo and Sendai while they take part in volunteer projects such as planting gardens and repairing damaged libraries. They will also have a chance to travel around  both cities. The trip is part of a program called the Kizuna Project, organized by the Laurasian Institution and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership. “Hiroko Nagai (a Japanese teacher at Memorial) applied for it. I know it was not an easy task,” Craker said. The exclusive project took students from only eight schools in the United States. For the students and chaperones involved, it’s an honor that two of those eight schools are in Eau Claire, Craker added.