When Jason Hancock took the grand prize at the NHK-televised 42nd International Speech Contest last June, he surprised everyone -- not least of all himself. After a series of impeccable orations by the other finalists (on such topics as the Japanese political system and Japanese linguistics), Hancock first introduced himself, by his adopted Japanese name, Tsutomu Miyakoshi, then spent the next seven minutes regaling the audience with humorous anecdotes about the wonderful people he'd met here -- in less-than-perfect Japanese.
After the awards ceremony, Toru Ito, former principal of Niitsuru Junior High School in Fukushima Prefecture, where Hancock works as an assistant language teacher, made an honest admission: "Jason's Japanese ability did not compare to that of many of the other 12 finalists."
It seems, however, that something else took precedence over fluency. As one of the judges of the speech competition put it, Hancock won because his words "spoke directly to the heart."