Student Activities

Tristen Dean, a sophomore at Lyon College, won first place in the university division at the Seventh Louisiana Japanese Speech Contest held on March 5 at Tulane University.  The speech contest is open to college and graduate level students in five states.  Dean competed against 21 post-secondary students from Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.  His award winning speech in Japanese was entitled “The Seasons and Japanese Literature.”  He received the $500 Dr. Jack Perry Strong Award, a first place certificate, and a Japanese dictionary.  Dean, a graduate of Boise High School, is currently completing his second year of Japanese at Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas.  His instructor of Japanese is Mieko Peek, who hopes that other Lyon students will consider participating in next year’s speech contest.

Students tried calligraphy, abacus, origami, Japanese songs, and taiko.

At the Big Show, students of the Japanese language demonstrated taiko beating on the trash can.

Charles, Juan, and Tracy sang Hey Jude in Japanese while Kent and Kevin played the guitar, and Cody the piano.

Lyon students of Japanese demonstrated calligraphy, Japanese arts and crafts, and candy catching with chopsticks.  Since demonstrations of this kind were new to International Night, there was a long line for each activity table, and the participants really enjoyed this type of exposure to Japanese culture.  In addition, Lyon students performed Japanese tongue twisters on the stage and invited the audience to join them in reciting the tongue twisters.  This was quite successful, too.  Lyon College will host the January 2005 Community International Night.

Kent holding a Japanese flag

Kent and Juan presented Japanese adjectives in ninja costume.  They were super!