Doha: The Japanese Embassy in Qatar is set to hold its 13th Japanese Speech Contest today (March 12).
The activity is part of the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Diplomatic Relations between Qatar and Japan.
The contest was earlier supposed to happen in January but was later halted due to the rise of COVID-19 cases in the country at the time.
The participants for the competition are non-native Japanese speakers and residents of Qatar. They will compete under three categories: recitation where they will read a pre-designated story in Kanji and English; free topics where participants will give a speech about a topic of his choice with a title (time limit is two to three minutes); and lastly, free topic where participants will also give a speech of his choice with title and at the end of the speech, they will be given questions related to his speech in Japanese and answer it (time limit for this is four to five minutes).
Criteria for judging include content and construction, pronunciation and the manner.
Recently, Qatar and Japan marked 50th anniversary in a programme at Msheireb Barahat Square in Msheireb Downtown Doha with the theme “Together to the Future.”
It was in May 1972 that diplomatic relations between the two countries were established. In January 1973, the Embassy of Qatar in Japan was established. And on May 1974, the Embassy of Japan in Qatar was established.
