For the past 12 years, the Japanese Embassy has held a Japanese Speech Contest in Ankara. The 12th of these contests recently took place at the Ankara Turkish-Japanese Foundation. This year 18 competitors participated in this speech contest, which was covered with great interest by both the visual media and newspapers.
The topic for the contestants speeches was “Fellowship”. Winners of each category were awarded a 2-week vacation in Japan. This year, jury members said that the Japanese level of the competitors was very high, although Japanese teaching sources are limited in Turkey. In addition, they also stated that this year is “The year of Turkey” in Japan and that these kinds of activities are very important to improve relations between the two countries.
This year, in category A, Bilkent University 4th year Computer Engineering student Ali Cevahir, won first prize with his speech entitled “Fellowship in the Heart”. From the same department, 4th year student Bayram Boyraz took second place with his speech entitled “Who is a friend?”
Ali Cevahir and Bayram Boyraz have honored their Japanese teacher Saeko Ohashi with the following words: “We have been learning Japanese at Bilkent by attending non-credit courses taught by Saeko Ohashi and we have won these prizes through the outstanding effort of our teacher.”