On April 3rd and 4th, 2009, six Japanese students represented Silver Creek High School at the annual Japan Bowl National Competition in Washington D.C. This competition pits schools from all over the nation against one another in a Jeopardy-format answering questions about Japanese language, culture, history and politics in Japanese! This year, Silver Creek fielded two teams at the Japanese 2 and Japanese 4 levels (there is not contest for Japanese 1). As always, the students worked extremely hard for more than three months in order to prepare themselves for this special challenge.
This year, our new J2 members announced their presence with a bang by qualifying for the finals in 1st place. In the finals, they lost some points for quick, but inaccurate answers and ended the final round in third place. Nevertheless, they did Silver Creek proud and will be a force with which to be reckoned in the future. Our repeat J4 team also did extremely well-finishing in 6th place despite brutal competition at the highest skill level.
Other highlights include meeting the inventor of Sudoku-Maki Kaji, watching a performance by GWU students in Japanese, hearing the inspirational talk of Ai Kawashima (who besides being a famous singer, has also opened schools in the Third World), and touring our nation's capitol. Let's not forget the wonderful Sakura Matsuri that happens every year around this time--we were there, and we have the t-shirts to prove it.
The 2008-2009 Silver Creek High School Japan Bowl Team Members are:
Level 4-- Catherine Amutan (captain), Melissa Ha, and Victoria Le.
Level 2-- Ajay "Koramen" Tripathi (captain), Brian "Smile" Ly, and Kevin "Akira" Phan.
For the official website of the Japan Bowl, as well as videos and official results, click here.
For 2002 Japan Bowl National results and photos click here.
For 2003 Japan Bowl Regional results and photos click here.
For 2003 Japan Bowl National results and photos click here.
For 2004 Japan Bowl Regional results and photos click here.
For 2004 Japan Bowl National results and photos click here.
For 2005 Japan Bowl National results and photos click here.
