To some people, she is known as Kanna; to others, as Grace. By either name, the 18-year-old Westridge teenager is just as comfortable chatting with her American friends as she is singing karaoke with pals in Japan.

Kanna Otagiri grew up in the Santa Clarita Valley and was raised in a traditional Japanese home, where her parents usually speak Japanese to their daughter and two sons, Daichi (Max), 16, and Genki (Jack), 10. The siblings use both their Japanese and American names; and over the years they have traveled frequently with their parents to Japan to visit relatives. So Otagiri’s parents were not too surprised when she asked their permission to participate in a study abroad program in Japan for half of her senior year at West Ranch High School last year.

She and her good friend, Malissa Esquivias, of Castaic, hatched the plan to study in Japan while still juniors, says Otagiri. “We had been talking about how cool it would be to study in Japan. I spoke with my parents and they said they were fine with that,” she says.

Her father, Masahisa Otagiri, and mother, Akiko Otagiri, made an agreement with their daughter: they would foot the tuition bill if she earned enough spending money from her part-time job at a local cookie retail store.

“I thought it would be good for her if this experience became her reason for wanting to learn more about Japan, so I encouraged my daughter. Since it was the country I was born in, it wasn’t like she was going to a country I didn’t know. Therefore, I wasn’t as worried as I probably would have been had she chosen a place like France or something,” says Akiko Otagiri.

To prepare for her trip, Otagiri worked part-time, brushed up on her Japanese speaking skills at a tutoring center, and researched the Saga area, where she would live for five months. Her friend, Malissa Esquivias, was placed with a host family in Machida, a city in the western part of Tokyo.

Otagiri was familiar with the prefectures (divisions) Osaka, Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara and Wakayama. But she had never visited Saga, located between the Nagasaki and Fukuoka prefectures. “This part I knew nothing about,” she says.

But she became quite familiar with Saga while living with two host families in the city and attending Saga Commercial High School from the end of August 2008 through January 2009.

During that time, she lived for three months with her first host family: Takayuki Kitajima, his wife Setsuko, and daughters Haruna, 16, and Akane, 13. “The first house was surrounded by fields. I had to bike for half an hour to get to school,” she says.

A typical day began about 6 a.m., when Otagiri and her host sisters awoke to make their lunches while Setsuko prepared a breakfast of rice or bread, eggs and yogurt. The girls rode their bikes to and from school, returning home by 5:30 or 6 p.m. Some students got home from school even later in the evening. “There, people don’t go to the closest school, you test into schools,” says Otagiri.

Once home, the girls were busy with chores. Otagiri folded laundry while watching television. “Everything was great. We got along really well. They treated me like a family member,” says Otagiri. “If my host mother was mad, she would say, ‘you’re getting this wrong and I need you to fix it.’”

For entertainment, they all sang karaoke. “Karaoke is a huge activity for students in Japan, so I went there a lot. There was one other study abroad student at my school from Bulgaria, and she and I were obsessed with going,” says Otagiri, adding that sometimes they sang up to seven hours at a time.

Another popular activity in Japan is taking purikura photos. The photo booth machines are typically located in shopping malls; friends take pictures together and the purikura photo machine prints them out in the form of stickers.

In contrast with her first, outgoing host family, Otagiri’s second host family was serious and reserved. Hiroaki Nakamura, his wife, Ikuko, and their three children, Ayaka, 19 (who resides in Tokyo), Miki, 16, and Shingo, 11, live closer to the high school, so now it was just a 15-minute bike ride to classes. “I got to sleep in a little bit later,” says Otagiri.

Meals were more traditional here and included nabe (a hot pot dish of vegetables and meat), miso (soy bean paste) soup and a lot of fish. Over the winter break, Otagiri’s host family took her along on a trip to the city of Nagasaki, where they enjoyed a short stay at a hot springs hotel.

As much as she enjoyed living with both host families, Otagiri was homesick for her own family. “I would say it took me about two-and-a-half months to truly get used to living over there. It helped that one of my best friends was at least in the same country. We used to spend a little bit of each day talking to each other about our days. I would occasionally write emails to my brother with pictures attached, or I would make an international call on the cell phone I was renting in order to keep in touch with my family,” says Otagiri.

Living away from home taught her how to be more responsible for her own actions, says Otagiri. “Even though I was with a host family, I still was pretty independent.”

Otagiri says her experience also taught her how to deal with new situations. “Since their customs were so different than mine, I really had to adapt to everything so that I wouldn’t offend anyone.”

Now a student at College of the Canyons, Otagiri plans to transfer to a UC next year, major in sociology and pursue a career in teaching or translating.