Student Wins Japanese Speech Contest

Contact: Hiroyuki Oshita, (740) 593-4570

ATHENS, Ohio -- (May 17, 2000) Ohio University junior Matt Buckner, a finance major from Butler, was the grand prize winner at the Second Annual Japanese Language Speech contest at Ohio State University in March.

Buckner's speech and presentation, "The Japanese Recession," was the winner in a field of seven university division finalists and seven high school finalists invited to the contest. In addition to the speech which Buckner had to present in Japanese, he greeted the judges according to Japanese tradition. Buckner was awarded a round-trip ticket to Japan on Northwest Airlines.

The contestants were screened from a large pool of high school and college applicants with similar backgrounds in Japanese study. After presenting, each participant had to respond to questions in Japanese from a panel of judges.

Buckner began his formal study of Japanese at Ohio University two weeks after his high school graduation in 1997. He learned his first word of the foreign language from a Japanese exchange student living next door to him in Gamertsfelder Hall. Buckner's father also was an influence.

"My dad, the president of Ballistic Applications and Materials, a small international corporation, told me in high school that I should focus on studying a foreign language to accompany my studies in business," he said. "It was these words of wisdom from my dad that became the roots of my success in learning Japanese."

Buckner participated in the Ohio University-Chubu Study Abroad Program in Nagoya, Japan, in 1998. Last summer, he was selected as an intern by the Ohio Saitama Internship Program and placed at Bushu Gas, a company in Saitama Prefecture.

This summer, Buckner will return to Japan for an internship at Taiyo, a Japanese distributor of the Ingersoll-Rand Corp. in the United States. He will graduate in March 2001 and begin a research student program at a Japanese graduate school under a full scholarship provided by the Japanese government. After completing the program, he will go to graduate school in Japan.

The annual Japan America Society speech contests are conducted regionally in the United States and are jointly sponsored by the Japan America Society of Central Ohio, the Consulate General of Japan, the Central Ohio Japanese Association of Commerce and Ohio State University.

"There is no doubt that Japanese has been the most exciting, fun, rewarding and challenging experiences in my life."