Home Community Washington State Japanese Speech and Skit Contest held online this year

Washington State Japanese Speech and Skit Contest held online this year

Eric Bradley from Issaquah High School won the first prize for Level 4

by Misa Murohashi, The North American Post

The annual Japanese Speech and Skit Contest was held online on June 4, as the originally planned contest, in March at Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington (JCCCW), was postponed due to COVID-19. It was the first online contest since the program started in 1983.  The contest was first hosted by the Japan-America Society of the State of Washington (JASW) with the purpose of providing Japanese learners with opportunities to demonstrate their progress. The Hyogo Business & Cultural Center continued hosting the contest in 1994. The Washington Association of Teachers of Japanese and Consulate General of Japan joined as co-hosts in 2014. Today the contest focuses on high school students. Starting this year, this event is being combined with the JIS (Japanese in School) festival, hosted by JASW.

As the students were not able to gather, each of them recorded his/her speech or skit video and posted it online. This year’s speech contest winners were Thomas Tang from Roosevelt High School for Level 2, Eric Bradley from Issaquah High School for Level 4, and Kathy Duefrane from Curtis Senior High School for Heritage Level.

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Misa Murohashi is Editor-in-chief of The North American Post and general manager of North American Post Publishing Inc. Born and raised in Japan, she moved the Seattle area in 2005. She earned a master's degree in Urban Planning from the University of Washington in 2016 and has been at the current position since 2017. She often writes about urban issues and Japanese American early immigration history in the Seattle Area.