I first grew interested in Japanese when I was in high school. Unlike most of my peers who grew attached to Japanese culture through Anime or Manga, I was fascinated by the writing systems of the Japanese Language – a perfectly balanced mixture of Kana (pseudo-character) and Kanji (Chinese character). This unique interest may be attributed to my experience of calligraphy practice while I was a child.
While I studied at Peking University in China I audited Japanese classes for two years. I continued on my third year at University of Michigan after I came to US, mainly to reinforce my speaking and listening skills. After class, I would usually visit my Japanese instructor Mrs. Mayumi Oka’s office, and we both enjoyed talking about the social and cultural differences between Japan, China, and the US. During one of our discussions, Mrs. Oka kindly brought to my attention the opportunity to participate in the annual Michigan state Japanese Language Speech Contest. She suggested me to draft a script on Sino-Japanese vocabulary, a recurrent topic of our conversation.
The initial draft of the speech underwent 13 revisions based on the feedbacks from Mrs. Oka and other Japanese lecturers over the period of four weeks. I then practiced again and again to make it sound natural, until I learned the whole script by heart. On the day of the contest, all our hard work paid off. The speech won a standing ovation from the audience, and I was awarded the first prize with a round-trip ticket to Japan.
If you are interested in my speech, you can access the Japanese transcript (PDF) and the English translation (PDF). The event and my speech were covered by General Consulate of Japan in Detroit (website), and Japan Business Society in Detroit (PDF). It was also featured as the reading material in a Japanese reader for English speakers (website).