University students from Aichi Prefecture are volunteering to show crew members of luxury cruise ships around Nagoya when the vessels visit the port.

Some of the students plan to join travel agencies when they graduate, and feel they can learn a lot from the crew members, who have traveled around the world extensively.

Early in the morning of April 28, the Mariner of the Seas, a 311-meter-long Voyager-class cruise ship, put in at Kinjo Pier in Nagoya's port.

The cruise ship was on a five-day journey to Tokyo from Shanghai, and carried 3,000 guests and 1,000 crew members, including five from the Philippines, China and Ukraine.

Four students from Aichi Gakuin University and Sugiyama Jogakuen University were waiting for the crew members when they landed.

The ship was docked until the evening and the crew only had three hours for sightseeing in Nagoya — meaning the students were charged with showing them a good time that also had to be a short time.

The students took the group to Nagoya Station, communicating mostly in English as they went. However, 20-year-old Ayami Wakamatsu, a third-year student from the School of Culture-Information Studies at Sugiyama Jogakuen University, realized the Chinese man she was assigned to did not speak English. For the rest of the short outing, they communicated by writing kanji, as well as through spoken Chinese, which she is studying.

The group ate misokatsu, (miso-flavored deep-fried pork cutlets), a local specialty, at a restaurant near the station and shopped at an outlet of the lifestyle retailer Tokyu Hands.

Twenty-year-old Issei Meguro, a third-year student from the literature department at Aichi Gakuin University, was assigned to a Ukrainian man who oversees safety-related matters aboard the ship.

Meguro is planning to join a trading company and wants to work abroad. When he discovered that the Ukrainian man was a vegetarian, he took him to a coffee shop that sells vegetable sandwiches.

"We wracked our brains to think of ways to make Nagoya more enjoyable. I'm glad that he enjoyed himself in the end," said Meguro.

Tour Station, a travel agency in Fuso, Aichi Prefecture, came up with the business proposal of having students play host to international crew members.

The firm is partnered with the Nagoya port office of the tourism ministry's Chubu Regional Development Bureau, which promotes the port outside Japan.

"We have sightseeing plans for passengers of luxury cruise ships that stop at the port of Nagoya, but not for the crew members," said Hiroaki Kato, 49, chairman of Tour Station.

"We think it will be a good experience for the students to entertain crew members, who are, in turn, used to taking care of passengers," he explained.

The company conducts an internship program for university students to learn about tourism in spring and summer each year.

The travel agency contacted Aichi Gakuin University, Sugiyama Jogakuen University and Aichi Shukutoku University, from which they have accepted students for the internship program in the past, asking for volunteers to take crew members for sightseeing in the city.

So far, the company has done this twice, once in March and again in April.

"I have traveled around the world for work, but it's only here in Nagoya that they have asked us one by one what we want to do and choose the itinerary accordingly," said Rony Cruse, 40, a guitarist from the cruise ship who joined the sightseeing trip organized by students both times.

"I had difficulty interacting with people from countries that speak different languages, such as the Philippines and Ukraine, but it was a valuable experience," said Wakamatsu.

"I will continue to cherish this memory even after I start working in a travel agency," she added.

This section, appearing Tuesdays, features topics and issues from the Chubu region covered by the Chunichi Shimbun. The original article was published on May 24.