International aid groups and governments have escalated efforts to dispatch rescuers and supplies to earthquake-hit Nepal, but severed communications and landslides in the Himalayan nation posed formidable challenges to the relief effort.

The friendship has solidified further after the Great East Japan Earthquake last year, according to Ann Stock, the Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy at the U.S. State Department. After the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami rocked Japan, the U.S. provided weather and nuclear expertise...

The Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program has been around since 1987. This program, the largest component of which places native English speakers in Japan’s junior and senior high schools for year-long tours of duty as Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs), has thousands of alumni from around the world – more than 20,000 from the United States alone.