The 19 th Annual Speech Contest Minori Murata The 19 th Annual Colorado Japanese Speech Contest was held at University of Colorado at Boulder on the 12 th of November. This year’s contest included 33 participants from 6 universities and colleges. This year’s judges were Ms Miwako Winters from Denver’s East High School, Mr. Shigeaki Murata from M&B International Friendship, and Ms. Susan Schmidt from ATJ. The contest opened with greetings from the Honorable Kenichi Kimiya, Deputy Consul General of the Consulate General of Japan at Denver. In this year’s contest, college I participants presented a variety of skits. College II, II, and IV participants did speech presentations. The College I skits were fun and showed a lot of creativity. There were a wide variety of speech topics, including “experiences in Japan,” “cultural differences,” “international issues,” and ‘environmental issues.” Lunch was provided by Sushizanmai, and Japanese style snacks were provided. The post contest video was a video of the Japanese TV program, “Doraemon.” The Honorable Kenichi Kimiya ended the contest with the comments about performances. He was very impressed with the quality of the performances and difficulty of the topics. The following students were the winners in their respective categories. Please click the name of the winners to read their speech: College II 1 st Prize: Brittany Partin, Pikes Peak Community College 2 nd Prize: Sara Jelly, University of Colorado at Boulder 3 rd Prize: David Ruscko, Colorado State University
College III 1 st Prize: Ki-Hoon Kwan, Colorado State University 2 nd Prize: Salem Evans, Colorado State University 3 rd Prize: Nick Montana, Pikes Peak Community College
College IV 1 st Prize: Maryann Shane, Colorado State University 2 nd Prize: Patrick Padden, Colorado State University 3 rd Prize: Andrew Munõz, Colorado State University Special Prizes: Hyun-Soo Park, University of Colorado at Boulder |