Hanna Yoshida, winner of this year's Japan Times Bee, advanced to the next oral level of the Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland, outside Washington on Tuesday.
Yoshida correctly spelled "zymoscope," sending the 14-year-old into the second stage of the preliminary session of the U.S.'s top spelling competition.
After her word was read, the student from K. International School Tokyo in the capital's Koto Ward asked for the language of origin of the word, which, according to the moderator, descended partially from Greek and moved into Latin.