Japanese Speaking Competition - 日本語のスピーキングコンテスト

Hey Monday😃

This weekend was really awesome. On Saturday I went to the "countryside" near Kyoto, but I´m not going to talk about that in this post. This post will be about what I did on Sunday.... which was to participate in a speaking contest. And I can say, OMG it was scary. So to start from the beginning. We had a meeting a few weeks ago with all the participators (10 finalists). There were only Asian people, mostly Chinese, who could practically speak Japanese fluently😅 and then it was me, studied Japanese one semester at the University haha. But yeah I thought what the heck, it will be a fun experience. And now I can put on my resume that my first time participating in a speaking contest was where I had to perform a speech in Japanese for 5 minutes😆

The day started with all finalists meeting up at 11 o´clock at the train station before we went to the place where the competition was taking place. The first thing on the schedule was a rehearsal, they showed us how we should sit, how to act when they announced our name, we got to try the microphone on the stage, etc. I can say I got a shock when I saw how big the room was where we were going to perform the speech... They had put up chairs for over 130 people + the 5 judges who wat in the front. I would estimate that there were around 90-100 people there. After the rehearsal, it was time for some lunch before the competition started.

We first had to introduce our selves in Japanese, so I said basically my name, where I come from and that I had only been studying for one semester so we will see how this goes, but I will do my best. After everyone had introduced themselves, the competition started. We god judged by 4 women at one table, and one elderly woman who sat at an own table. I guess she might have been the main boss or something.

I was the third person out, gosh... I was so nervous haha. It was one girl and one boy before me (both Chinese), who both didn't bring their script on stage, they just left it on their chair when they went up on the stage, apparently, they had memorized their whole speech and both did a perfect speech. Though to follow up after that haha. But the speech went well, of course, I thought it went better when I was sitting in my room and performing in front of my chair, instead of a 100 people hehe. I was also glad that my speech, comparing to others, was standing out. All others were talking about how polite people are in Japan, while I was talking about how cleaned I thought it is in Japan comparing to other countries.

After everyone had performed their speech there was a short break with a choir singing while the judges made their decision. After the choir and a short break, we got to return to our seats in front of the audience. I was really tired at the time because I had been so focused the whole day and I had been trying to listen to really fast Japanese where I didn´t understand half of it. So they were announcing the winners, and I was so sure to not win so I kind fo zoomed out haha. Then I hear my name and people start to applaud and the other participating sitting next to me starts to look at me and saying "omedetou" (congratulations).

I stand up and haven´t still really realized what happened so I ask the girl beside me "wait did I win a prize?" and she was like, "yes!". So I get up on stage and the elderly woman, who I btw hadn´t shown any expression during the whole competition, (totally poker face), is coming up to the stage. I´m still a little bit dazed here and I´m still not one hundred percent sure what's going on. I´m looking quickly at the other participant, who are making thumbs up and smiles. The elderly lady comes up with a diploma and starts to read. After that, she is handing out the diploma and bowning, while I also bow at the same time I´m accepting the diploma. Well, here an embarrassing situation arises... I went up after bowing, but the lady is still bowing and is not letting go of the diploma, so I quickly get down in a deeper bow again 😆 After the diploma I also get a small envelope and some flowers, of course bowing after receiving every item. In Japanese culture bowing is very important and I think there is different bowing depending on how much aprication you should show. Tips, do your research on your bowing before going to Japan.

One funny thing was that the lady I think was the "big boss" only handed over the prize to me, while the others got the prizes from other students who helped in this event. I guess she had a veto in the decision of who got the honor prize. The person who one the whole thing was a guy from Indonesia, and the two before me (who went out script) got second and third place. It was a really fun day :3

One thing I also want to point out was that there were no bitter faces of the people who didn´t win any prize (or at least they didn´t show it), which I´m used to from different competitions in Sweden😅

Last words before I end this novel post (sorry I´m also writing for myself so I can go back and remember this day), is that If you get the chance to do something similar, just do it. It doesn't matter if you win or not, because you will be one experience richer no matter what.

/マレーネ💜