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Every year for the last decade and a half, a prestigious international exchange program has chosen a single class of students to travel to Japan to explore the country’s practices and culture. For the first time in history, an architecture school has been singled out for that honor—specifically, Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture. 

In March 2026, nine College of Architecture students traveled to Japan to explore ancient architectural wonders, speak with established Tokyo firms, learn about tradition and long-revered methods—and, in the end, offer outsiders’ perspectives to trip organizers.

“It’s an opportunity to express diplomacy through architecture,” says trip organizer and chaperone Anna Ninoyu (B.ARCH. ’05), founder of the Chicago-based architecture firm METIS Design. 

The Tomodachi Initiative was created in 2011 following the devastating Tōhoku, or Great East Japan, earthquake and tsunami as an international student exchange program that would promote mutual understanding between the United States and Japan. Every year, a single college in the U.S. is picked for participation. The College of Architecture was not only the first architectural school to be invited, it was also only the second school in the Midwest to participate in the program.  

The Tomodachi Initiative is a public-private partnership between the nonprofit U.S.-Japan Council and the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, with support from the Government of Japan.  

“This trip promotes Japanese architecture and design, but also an understanding of U.S.-Japan relations,” says Ninoyu, who is also an adjunct professor at the College of Architecture and has served as the U.S.-Japan Council’s Midwest regional chair. 

Students explored sites ranging from the Meiji Jingu shrine to the Imperial Palace, and met with SANAA and Sou Fujimoto Architects, both firms in Tokyo. They were questioned by enthusiastic architecture students at the Nara Women’s University and even took part in overnight home stays with local families. 

And—given that the students were all participating in the College of Architecture’s Lost and Found studio taught by John and Jeanne Rowe Endowed Chair in Architecture John Ronan—they also visited Tokyo’s municipal lost and found facility, where misplaced items are brought.  

“Japan has some of the best architects in the world, and some of the most advanced construction techniques,” says Ronan, who accompanied students on the trip. 

Most importantly, throughout the week-long trip, the students were charged with exploring one of three design themes, which they would then formally discuss with a U.S.-Japan Council panel at the trip’s end. 

The first theme was “nature.” Students spoke of Chicago’s many greenspaces, starting with the Osaka Garden in Jackson Park, the centerpiece of Japan’s presence at the 1893 World’s Fair. They then discussed how nature was similarly revered in Japan, touching upon the tenets of the Shinto religion. 

Next up was the theme of “intersections.” Here, students delved into the philosophical, quickly transitioning from analyzing Japan’s concrete byways to ruminating about the countries’ intangible intersections of culture. 

“We took it to a conceptual level in culture, how the intersections of relationships between the U.S. and Japan can affect the futures of our countries, and how we can help each other,” says student Nicholas Papas (B.ARCH. 5th Year). 

Finally, students explored alleyways: “forgotten spaces” that, in Chicago, serve largely utilitarian purposes such as parking and garbage collection—but in Japan serve as side streets, replete with pedestrians and store fronts, noted student Elizabeth Escobar (M.ARCH. 2nd Year). 

Council members remarked that they’d passed through those alleys many times without noticing them. To see them perceived differently, they told students, offered them a new awareness of their own environment. 

“They [U.S.-Japan Council members] were very appreciative and amazed at what the students brought to the table,” Ninoyu says. “They now have a newfound appreciation for things they see every day in their own neighborhood. Host families said the same things.” 

After returning to Chicago, Papas says that the trip was “lifechanging as an architecture student.” 

“The transition they achieve from their indoor living space to their outdoor space is very, very advanced. Also, their buildings’ sense of serenity, I think they demand this quiet, this silence, which struck me very hard,” Papas says.

Papas continues, “With my own studio project, I now want to completely change it. The purity aspect wasn’t there. The connection to landscape wasn’t there. I want to change it to the view in Japan, the things they consider in design that I had not been considering before.”