Monday, Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association announced the winner of Happy News 2009 Grand Prize.
In this award, the readers of the Japan’s news papers choose the happiest story from the entries that are articles posted during the past year.
The grand winning story that was picked from 12,025 entries is “High School Entrance Exam, Grabbing Spring by Hitchhiking” by The Chunichi Shinbun.
The article was about a junior high school girl and her mother, who were on the way to the girl’s high school entrance exam in a different prefecture, where it had a lot of snow and the night train they were suppose to take was cancelled, but the mother didn’t give up.
She hitchhiked a truck.
Kindly, the driver took them to the exam site which is 300 km away from where they were so that the girl passed the exam.
To explain the culture back ground, high school entrance exam is serious as college entrance exam in Japan.
And hitchhiking is not illegal.
Besides the grand prize, 17 articles won prizes in four different categories; general people, high school students, junior high school students and elementary school students.
This is JAPAN Style!
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