On February 15, the Consulate General of Japan in Chiang Mai and the Northern Branch of the Association of Former Japanese Students in Thailand held the 18th Japanese Speech Contest for Thai University Students in Northern Thailand. Our university has been supporting this contest since 2011 and offers the winner the opportunity to study at our university for one year.

The contest was attended by Tetsuo Morishita, Vice President for Global Academic Affairs, and Kiyoshi Noguchi, Lecturer in Japanese Language Education at the Center for Language Education and Research, who also served as a judge.

In the final round, 21 students who passed the preliminary round presented their speeches, and Ms. Anchisa Singkham, a sophomore at Naresuan University, won the first prize and the opportunity to study in Japan.

The contestants’ speeches ranged from universal themes, such as their motivation for learning Japanese, their experience of visiting Japan, and their gratitude to their families, to episodes unique to Thailand, such as what they gained from their Buddhist ordination experience or a story about snakes. In general, the participants expressed their interest in gender identity, which shows today’s young generation and their high level of awareness of this issue.

The title of Ms. Singkham’s speech was “A skirt is just a piece of clothing”. In Thailand, people sometimes tell timid men to “wear skirts,” to which she wondered, “Does that mean we women are timid? And when her relative appeared out of the blue in a skirt, everyone criticized him, but he replied, “Skirts have no gender, they’re just a piece of clothing.” She eloquently described her feelings in Japanese that hearing his words made her feel relieved and wanted to support him.