I Presented at the 7th Minecraft Cup (2025)

I Appeared in a Talk Session at the Minecraft Cup

I recently spoke in a talk session at the 7th Minecraft Cup held at the University of Tokyo (Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, Fukutake Hall), and discussed what I gained through Minecraft under the theme “Learning and the Power of Creation from Minecraft”.

What is the Minecraft Cup

Minecraft Cup is a digital making contest held in Japan for children from elementary to high school, where participants use Minecraft Education to create works around a theme and compete with entries from across Japan and overseas.

【災害に立ち向かう力をマイクラで表現】第7回Minecraftカップまちづくり部門 全国大会・表彰式（たてもの部門表彰式）

2026年2月15日に、第7回Minecraftカップまちづくり部門 全国大会・表彰式（たてもの部門表彰式）の様子をオンライン配信でお届けします🏆＜タイムスタンプ＞━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🏁開会式━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━09:00 オープニング10:30 開会式...

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Overview of the Talk Session

From the left: Doi-san from the organizing office, Sawayama-san, the champion of CoderDojo Fukuyama Daimon, me (a past participant), Kato from IDENCE Inc., Sekiguchi, the champion of Sakura Internet / CoderDojo Maebashi, and on the far right Kurihara from the organizing office.

I have participated in the Minecraft Cup three times in the past: I won an Encouragement Award at the 5th Minecraft Cup (2023), and qualified for and won an award at the national tournament at the 3rd Minecraft Cup (2021). I talked about what happened afterward.

Along with the announcement that I appeared in the talk session, I want to record here my relationship with the Minecraft Cup and what I gained from Minecraft (especially the Minecraft Cup).

At the time of this session, a rough title related to the Minecraft Cup would be: a software engineer who, after winning at the Minecraft Cup, enrolled in Keio University, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies (SFC). Even calling myself a software engineer seems uncertain these days as AI writes code, so such titles may disappear.

For the past few months I had been working part-time at the Minecraft Cup (Digital Making Council), so while speaking as a guest I was also helping behind the scenes. During the talk session, you can catch glimpses of the Minecraft Cup T-shirt worn by staff peeking out from under my hoodie.

I was a bit nervous because I had only four hours of sleep from being too excited the day before and was helping with operations despite being inexperienced, and because the talk session was scheduled between other events. Also, unlike presentations, talk sessions don’t have fixed content, so it was a fresh experience. I couldn’t believe I was given such a valuable opportunity…

My Relationship with the Minecraft Cup

I won an award at the Minecraft Cup in 2021. There were also times I didn’t ultimately win (2023) and a time when we made a project but couldn’t submit it (2019). Sometimes things go well, sometimes they don’t. The Minecraft Cup (the town-building category) is basically a team competition, but teams sometimes have conflicts, fail to coordinate, or lose motivation; for my team, the only year that went well was 2021.

minecraftcup.com

minecraftcup.com

What Kind of Team Was It?

The team was made up of people good at technical aspects, people strong in design and planning, and people with broad, shallow knowledge beyond Minecraft—basically people who liked “digital making,” which is even reflected in the name of the organizing body.

Also, the team included people who weren’t attending school, people who couldn’t do what others considered “normal,” and conversely people with amazing talents—an uneven group. For the record, I used to be somewhat truant.

Is that a bad thing? Not really. The 2021 Minecraft Cup took place during COVID with online classes or no school at all, so we had free time, which became a tailwind, and the whole team enthusiastically enjoyed digital making with Minecraft.

I also think it was notable that at first there were no instructors. The team gradually formed from friends playing a game together, so none of us were attending programming classes or being forced by anyone; we were just playing Minecraft with friends who liked the game, then discovered a place like this, jumped in, met many kind adults, and were able to grow… My parents weren’t trying to make me play Minecraft, but they weren’t completely against it either. They often said things like “games for 30 minutes a day” like the Kagawa Prefecture ordinance, but they were trying to figure out what approach was best. As a result, I ended up in an environment that satisfied my intellectual curiosity. I think I was lucky.

What the Minecraft Cup Did for Me

So what happened afterward? Astonishingly, I’m now a university student at Keio University, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies (SFC), a place where someone who used to struggle with school can now attend almost perfectly. It’s fun.

I was relatively bad at conventional study (the usual classes up to high school), but I had confidence that I could do my favorite things endlessly. Nowadays that kind of individuality is becoming recognized, and it can be leveraged in university admissions (called AO admission at Keio). University is truly wonderful: you can learn and pursue only the things you like and are interested in.

Progress After the Minecraft Cup

• Part-time work at a programming school
• After that, based on issues I learned about through programming education, I applied to and was selected for Mitou Junior and with what I made there I won an award at App Koshien 2024
• Then enrolled in Keio University, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies (SFC)

I think it’s a very good result that what I gained starting from the Minecraft Cup has taken this form. Of course the Minecraft Cup isn’t everything and I’ve met many other people, but it’s certainly one element in my story.

I’m now older than the eligible age for the Minecraft Cup, so I hope to help expand these circles worldwide. I’m not always around because I’m busy with university and my own projects, but I’ll help as much as I can! I’m based in Tokyo and sometimes show up at events, so please feel free to say hi.