A. 04. Greetings

Welcome to the 18th Annual San Diego Regional Japanese Speech Contest! It is great to see you all again in this auditorium. My name is Fumiko Tachibana. I have been representing the contest as the organizer since 2008. This contest started in 1996, nearly twenty years ago. Back then, I was busy sending my students from the school I was teaching at. I have had only fond memories of students competing and having fun at the same time, which gradually made where I am now being involved in this speech contest.

I would like to give my special thanks to all of you who are here today to support and encourage the students. Thank you.

We greatly appreciate the special guests, judges, teachers, volunteers, friends and parents who are here today to support this special event. Especially the dedicated volunteers try very hard to make this contest enjoyable as well as educational for everyone. Thank you.

We are also lucky to have gift supporters. Thank you so much for your generosity. Without all of your support, this contest would not have been sosuccessful and enjoyable.

Many thanks go to the following companies and organizations.

First we would like to mention JAL who donated an airplane ticket to Japan, Niigata Seiryo University who will support the two week homestay and fun study on campus, Temple University Japan Campus who donated the 2^nd and 3^rd place cash prizes, Kyocera International for Inamori Kazuo’s best seller book called Passion to Success, SONY who donated their exciting products, Cheng &Tsui for their best seller Language books including Key to Kanji, Stonebridge Press for their kanji books, San Diego Japan Marketing Services for special pens with our contest logo, UNO-Japan summer academic program with the beautiful obi, AJALT association with the books, Japan Foundation of the nihongodekimasu badges, Mitsuwa Market for milk coffee drinks, Nijiya Market for maccha KitKat, Iwamoto’s Positive Life International, JPT, Invent Dreams, and several individuals.

Thank you again for the fantastic gifts for the contest.

Finally and most importantly, I’d like to extend my best wishes to the contestants. Don't be nervous, treasure the moment, that happens only once, or twice in your lifetime.

Ganbare!

Fumiko Tachibana greets at the 18th Contest, Carlsbad.

SDJSCC

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prize info

gift supporters

Speech by the organizer for 2014:

Welcome to the 17th San Diego Regional Japanese Speech Contest! It’s so good to see all of you again in this auditorium. My name is Fumiko Tachibana. I have been representing the contest as an organizer since 2008. I am very happy to know that this contest has motivated many of you to not only to compete in this speech contest, but also to do well in your studies afterwards.

I would like to give my special thanks to all of you who are here today to support the students who live in San Diego and study Japanese. We greatly appreciate the special guests, the Judges, the teachers, volunteers, friends and parents who are here today to support our contestants.

We are also lucky to have sponsors who donated their products and goods just to support this event, thank you for the generosity. Without all of your support, this contest would not have been successful. We tried hard for all of these gift bags for contestants. Among the prize donations, the bags include cute origami that has a special message from the college students from Niigata Seiryo University, who were Visiting San Diego a couple of weeks ago. We also appreciate all prize donations including Kyocera International which donated 12 copies of a Passion for Success written by Kazuo Inamori, the founder of Kyocera Corporation for winners. I hope that all the students here will succeed like Inamori-san. Again we appreciate all of you who helped us to make this event special and memorable for everyone.

Finally, I’d like to extend my best wishes and good luck to the contestants. Take a deep breath, don't be nervous and give it your best effort. Have fun! Ganbatte kudasai! Thank you very much!

Fumiko Tachibana 3.23.2014

San Diego Japanese Speech Contest Committee 2015

P. O. Box 28884, San Diego, CA 92198

Fax: 858-217-6069

web: https://sites.google.com/site/sdjsc2015/home

Email to apply: SDJSCC at gmail.com