May 31, 2020 (NHK) - High school students learning the Japanese language in the United States have had their knowledge of Japan put to the test in an annual quiz.
The Digital Japan Bowl Championship is held every spring in Washington. This year's event took place online for the first time due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The competition attracted 170 participants from 29 high schools across the US.
Besides being questioned about Japanese culture and history, the students were also asked to identify cities from displayed pictures and prefectures from images of local mascots.
In another part of the quiz, the participants were asked to make a sentence using the Japanese idiom meaning "Can't believe one's ears."
When one student answered in fluent Japanese, "I couldn't believe my ears when I heard that my school would be closed due to the coronavirus," the judge described it as, "Wonderful."
A considerable number of people in the United States are learning Japanese spurred on by an interest in Japanese animation and games.
The Japan Foundation, a Tokyo-based cultural-exchange institution, estimates that 166,000 people are studying the language in the US.
The winner of the competition is usually awarded a trip to Japan. But the organizer says a travel schedule for this year's winner has not yet been decided due to the coronavirus pandemic.
