A trying time for Japanese students on LI

Alisa Watanabe spent most of Friday making telephone calls and logging on to social networks like Facebook and the Japan-based Mixi to glean information through friends in Japan about her loved ones.

She was growing agitated because she was among the last of the 19 Japanese students from an Asian Studies program at Stony Brook University who had yet to learn the whereabouts of relatives after the devastating Friday earthquake and tsunami.

Watanabe was relieved when an e-mail message from her 53-year-old mother in Okayama confirmed that the family was fine.

"I couldn't talk to them in person but I knew she was OK and that made everything better," said Watanabe, 20, an art major at Stony Brook.

She is one of dozens of exchange and international students who attend universities on Long Island. University administrators reached out to offer support to these students as soon as they learned of the quake. In e-mails, one-on-one conversations and telephone calls, officials expressed their sympathies and reminded students that advisors and guidance counselors were available as needed.

Stony Brook has the most ties to Japan because it has exchange programs with Waseda University in Tokyo and Nihon University in Mishima.

Currently, 60 Japanese students are enrolled in undergraduate, graduate and continuing education programs at Stony Brook, said Bill Arens, the university's dean of International Programs and Services.

"We have a counseling office and they made themselves available to all the students," Arens said. "We have to respond to emergencies in other parts of the world because our students come from different places and what happens in their home countries affects them here."

Stony Brook also has five New York-area students studying in Tokyo, including three who are Long Island residents. All had been reached Friday and were doing fine.

Eva Nagase, a lecturer for the Japanese studies program at Stony Brook, said she had spoken with several students.

"Some of them were shaken up," said Nagase. "The magnitude itself was scary and the tsunami was really bad, but not knowing about family was the scariest thing for them."