Vaughn-Ueda International Prize 2008

It's honour of classmates in high school to hear that Tomonari Takao, a Mainichi Shinbun journalist, won the Vaughn-Ueda International Prize 2008.
He did stories on south African countries. For example, Zimbabwe chaos and Kenyan enthusiasm on U.S. election last year, and got the prize.

In our highschool days, Takao played soccor football with Masashi Nakayama and Akihisa Yamamura who, sad to say, past away in the end of last year. When Akihisa Yamamura past away, he sent a telegram in condolence from Johannesburg, and we were surprised that Takao remembered a very small but impressive topic of the departed in our high school days and mentioned that in his telegram.

To tell the truth, it was a bit unexpected when I heared that Takao took a job at a newspaper publisher, but that makes sense for me realizing his good memory and acute power of observation.

Good Job, Takao! :)