As sophomore Aayan Mithani was sitting on the stage sitting next to the other four contestants, he could hear his heart beating in his ears and feel the blood rushing to his head as he waited for the results. He heard fifth place and fourth place called in the speakers. Finally, he heard his name get called for third place.

Mithani, freshman Henry Gray, junior Keegan Nash and junior Ike Fallin participated in the Japanese Speech Contest on March 8th in Houston, Texas. Both Gray and Mithani place 3rd, while Fallin and Nash won 1st place.

“It was pretty fun honestly,” Gray said. “It was a great community, and they were really nice.”

Nash said the people there were very friendly in Houston, and that they greeted them and gave them goodie bags. It was also nice to see people who were fluent in Japanese.

“It definitely helped with general knowledge of sentence structure and increasing my vocabulary, as well as making my Japanese more fluent and natural,” Fallin said.

The competitors took one to three months to prepare and practice their speeches. Gray said that Japanese teacher Mihoko Yamamura helped him the most and really pulled through for the other students. She also had volunteers from around Richardson give private lessons to the students who wanted to participate.

“She’s a very remarkable woman, she really helped a lot with the poem,” Gray said.

Majority of the competitors said that presenting the speech was very nerve-racking especially since they were speaking a another language.

“I was especially scared because it was my first year doing it,” Mithani said. “But once you get the hang of it, it’s not that bad. It’s just like doing a presentation.”

Mithani said besides actually saying the poem or speech, the most exciting part was knowing what places they got at the end.

“It was pretty fun honestly, It was a great community, and they were really nice,” Gray said.