Announcing Winners of the Tokyo Foundation Japanese Essay Competition

The Tokyo Foundation organized the Japanese Essay Competition in order to provide undergraduate students of Japanese at NF-JLEP universities with the opportunity to enhance their language skills and to learn more about Japan. We are now pleased to announce the prize winners.

NF-JLEP stands for Nippon Foundation Fund for Japanese Language Education Program. For more details of this program, please click here.

The applicants were asked to write an essay on the topic, “The dream (or dreams) you would like to realize by learning Japanese.”

There were about 80 entries altogether submitted to the eight NF-JLEP institutions. After the first screening at each institution, 32 essays were submitted to the Foundation where they were very rigorously reviewed by the outside screening panel and judged for the content, the message, and the quality of Japanese language.

We are now pleased to announce the prize winners of the Tokyo Foundation Japanese Essay Competition as follows. The first-prize winners will be invited to Japan in January 2010. You can find more details on our Japanese website. The two first-prize essays are posted there.

FIRST PRIZE (2 Winners)

Samantha Vickery (University of Auckland, New Zealand)   
Rebecca Chen (Monash University, Australia)   

SECOND PRIZE (3 Winners)

Yoojin Kim (Griffith University, Australia)   
Nuray Kocoglu    (Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey)   
Joanne Park (Macquarie University, Australia)   

THIRD PRIZE (10 Winners)

Dina Dwi Astartia (Indonesia University of Education, Indonesia)   
Tim Clark (Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, New Zealand)   
Seda Dedeoglu    (Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey)   
Egga Ginanjar    (Indonesia University of Education, Indonesia)   
Filip Georgiana    (University of Bucharest, Romania)   
Jee Eun Huh (Macquarie University, Australia)   
Elyse Jang (University of Auckland, New Zealand)   
Zhao Jing (University of Auckland, New Zealand)   
Abd El Rahman Ebrahim Mohammed (Cairo University, Egypt)   
Olivia Tan (Monash University, Australia)   

Members of the Final Screening Panel
Mr. Mitsuhiro ASADA: Editor-in-Chief, J-Life Editorial Department, ALC Press Inc.
Prof. Sumiko HACHIWAKA: International Student Center, Ibaraki University
Prof. Fumiko YAMAMOTO: Faculty of Literature, Graduate School, School of
Language and Culture, Musashino University

For the English application guidelines, please click here.