Through the Eyes of the former Consul General Yamada (June, 2017 - July, 2020)

Two High School Student Quiz Bowls

In March, I attended two high school-level quiz bowls, one in Montana and one in Washington State.
 
The first one, called Academic WorldQuest, was held at the University of Montana in Missoula. It is a national academic competition with the goal of having high school students build an awareness of international issues. Every year there are different themes. This year’s categories included Country in Focus: Qatar (the event’s sponsor), How to Deal with North Korea, Global Refugee and Migration Crisis, Climate Change, NATO – The Alliance at 70, and Japan-U.S. Relations. Japan was a big topic so the Consulate-General of Japan in Seattle became a co-organizer.

The questions were hard; one had to be really familiar with international issues to answer them correctly. Within 30 seconds, the four-person teams would submit their responses electronically with a clicker. While I thought each team would huddle together to figure out the answer, I seldom saw consultation within the teams, nor did I see who pressed the button. However they did it, it was impressive to find the button pressed and electronically registered in a cool, timely manner.

60 teams were assembled throughout Montana, totaling to about 300 high school participants. Montana is the fourth-largest state in the United States and is slightly larger than Japan. On the day of the competition (March 5), it was bitterly cold, with Missoula at -4F and Bozeman at an unbelievable -43F. In this cold weather, some teams drove more than 500 miles the previous day from the eastern part of the state to Missoula, which is in the West.

The winner was the team from Gardiner High School – a town that is 250 miles away, located at the northern entrance of Yellowstone National Park. The team will be allowed to compete in the national competition in Washington D.C. in April. It was a total coincidence, but on the morning of the competition, while I was eating breakfast at the hotel, one of the members from the team recognized me as the speaker at an event the day before and asked for my autograph on a commemorative mug. After the competition, I received a card from the winning team and one of the messages written was, “Thank you for signing my mug!” It was a surreal feeling. Congratulations, Gardiner High School team!
 
Timing its arrival to this competition, the Japanese government-sponsored “Walk in U.S. Talk on Japan” delegation came to Missoula and introduced high school students to contemporary Japan. The delegation consisted of four individuals. They presented on a variety of interesting topics, including Japanese companies, kyogen (traditional Japanese theater of laughter), the school lunch system, and astronomy. The presenters were Ms. Yuko Nakajo, a bank employee; Ms. Shoko Miyake, a kyogen player known as Tokuro Miyake the 10th; Ms. Aya Sakai from Japan Women’s University; and Mr. Yoshiki Hatta from The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. According to Ms. Nakajo’s presentation on Japanese companies, more than half of the 3,000 companies that are 200 years or older in the world are from Japan, with the construction group Kongō Gumi Co., Ltd. being the world’s oldest existing company, established in the year 578. The high school students greatly enjoyed these lively presentations. Furthermore, thanks to arrangements by the Honorary Consul of Japan for Montana, Mr. Ian Marquand, the high school students from Montana connected with students in Kumamoto Prefecture via Skype; many interesting conversations occurred regarding student life and future aspirations.
 
On March 16, across the river from Portland in Vancouver, Washington, I attended the Pacific Northwest Japan Bowl. This is a national quiz bowl organized for the past 27 years by the Japan-America Society of Oregon. The target group is high school students studying Japanese. Locally active Japanese companies such as Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd. are strong supporters of this event. I learned that prior to taking place in Vancouver, WA, the Pacific Northwest Japan Bowl preliminaries had all been held in Oregon, and that eight teams from three Washington schools participated in this event for the first time ever this year.
 
The Japan Bowl has two- to three-person teams. Divided between Level 3 and Level 4, a preliminary contest is held between fifteen teams from eight different high schools, with the top three teams competing in the finals on stage. The Japan Bowl not only uses an electronic format for answering questions on Japan and the Japanese language, but participants are also asked to use their language skills. For example, a student could be asked to make a sentence with the phrase “Pin kara kiri made” (translation: “From the best to the worst”). The judges would determine if the sentence made sense and would raise a sign of either a ○ (Correct) or × (Wrong). I particularly remember one contestant who received the four-character compound “Ichigo Ichie,” a zen word meaning “a chance encounter, therefore you put your heart and soul into it.” The student groaned for a while, but as time ticked away, he answered, “I will meet with President Trump and it will be an Ichigo-Ichie…” (note: my translation does not have enough oomph for the joke), and the audience erupted with laughter. The judging panel and I gave a ○ (correct), smiling. 
 
Quiz competitions are fun events driven by young people’s enthusiasm. Washington State, particularly Seattle, has traditionally strong ties to Japan and has many students studying Japanese. However, it is difficult for students from Seattle to travel to Portland. It was a very interesting event, so I hope that in the future we can have a preliminary to choose a “Washington State representative’ to be sent to the national Japan Bowl and become national champions.