Here comes my favorite lovely season. Colored leaves are shining beautifully against crystal clear blue sky. Let’s get started our meeting, where wonderful people with colorful personalities get together.
Today we had…
25 attendees including wonderful ６guests
Toastmaster: Yuki-san
Meeting theme: Take it easy! (Yuki-san said she has been hectic working and wanted to feel relaxed. Then she chose this as the meeting theme today.)
Word of the day introduced by Hideki-san: banter
means friendly conversation in which people tell jokes and laugh at each other.
e.g.) He was sitting in a café, bantering with friend.
Employees stayed late every night to drink from the open bar and banter about advertising concepts with their mentor.
the best users: Naoki-san, Marama-san, Mikiko-san
Timer: Megumi-san did a great job. She was beautifully juggling her task between manipulating the timer signal on the screen and typing each speaker’s time on the chat box.
Grammarian: Marama-san gave us some useful advice which Japanese English-learners hardly notice.
The best prepared speaker: Takako-san
The best table topic speaker: Marama-san
The best evaluator: Kazuko-san
Today we had a regular meeting consisted of prepared speeches, table topic speeches, and evaluation speeches.
The 1st prepared speaker was Yumi-san! Her speech title was “How to increase language learning enthusiasm.” First and foremost, surprisingly enough, she is a multilingual lady. About a decade ago while in China she mastered Mandarin, and now she has been learning Thai in Thailand. She shared her ideas that 3 factors were important to acquire a foreign language: necessity, motivation, and love. Especially she enjoys the last factor communicating with local people with their beautiful smile. To sum up her speech, she suggested that we should analyze what other factors increase your enthusiasm toward learning languages.
The 2nd speaker was Naoki-san! His speech title was “Impromptu speaking.” According to his speech manual, he was supposed to write down 5 general topic areas with he is familiar and give them to his speech evaluator before the meeting. I was his evaluator. His 5 topics were working abroad, cultural difference, Indian culture, craftsman, and online learning. I was curious about the last one the most, which he didn’t expect me to choose. He didn’t prepare it at all, so it was the very impromptu speech. He shared his experiences of chatting via Skype in Hong Kong and attending an online business school in India. What impressed me most was his way of speaking including non-verbal communication. Sounded like he made a prepared speech practicing a lot prior to the meeting.
The 3rd speaker was Takako-san! Her speech title was “Pay It Forward.” It is one of my favorite movies, but what she talked about was her own volunteer activities. Her speech was also moving. She emphasized “pay it forward” spirit is an essential element of volunteer activities. She described how and why she became involved with volunteer activities. She has taken an initiative in the group called “HIROBA International” in Tokushima. She and her members have lived abroad before with a lot of support from local people. They felt it was their turn to “pay it forward” to someone. They did a lot of research and field work for foreign people living in Tokushima. Then they published different kinds of bilingual guidebooks for them. Amazing!
To my embarrassment to say, I have experienced of doing volunteer work in a disaster-stricken area just once. Her speech inspired me to do something continuously to make our society better to live. Thanks for the heads-up!
Next, table topic session conducted very well by Midori-san! 3 members and 3 guests made a great off-the cuff-speech. Yes, guests have a chance to talk at this session as well as their brief introduction at the beginning of the meeting and their impressions after the meeting.
What is the happiest moment in your life?
Hideki-san have felt happiest to be a member of our Diversity club. Wow! Of course, I am pretty sure all of us are so glad to have him in our club 😉
What is your Dream Vacation plan?
Megumi-san, who was in charge of timer, had a lot of things she would like to do. For example, she wishes she could take a long vacation to spend her time at a gorgeous hotel with a servant, who does everything for her from vacuuming to prepare a tasty cuisine. She has been juggling among child-caring, housework and office work. I wish her dream will come true😉
Please give us your description of "A perfect land".
Marama-san touched upon her ideal land, where people live a peaceful life in a harmony. Also, as a mother of 3 kids, they all play peacefully together, not fighting over a small thing and listen to their mother. A perfect land would be quite different for each person, but it would be also a land where you have time to do your own thing.
Is modern life creating more problems?
Tatsuya-san is concerned about the current situation where people are suffering from modern convenient life. Many people including children spend too much time on their smartphones. Their obsessive behavior patterns disturb the course of daily activities, which can pose a threat to our future.
If a doctor gave you five years to live, what would you try to accomplish?
Hideo-san would like to pass The Eiken Test in Practical English Proficiency, informally, Eiken. He has been trying grade 1, the top level of the test. To tell the truth, I have the same goal and I know how hard it is. I have failed it 4 times. But I am going to follow my dream to pass it and be a school teacher again. Wish us luck!
What is your retirement plan?
Izumi-san, who has already retired, has enough time to do what she wants to do. She would love sketch traveling instead of taking photos around the world. Sounds fantastic! I will look forward to listening to her speech with her work someday.
Lastly, prepared speech evaluation session conducted by General Evaluator Aaron-san.
Both the 1st evaluator Kazuko-san and the 3rd evaluator Mikiko-san did a wonderful job as usual. Seeing is believing! I was the 2nd evaluator and was disqualified to vote, unfortunately. I talked too much. Other than that, the most remarkable thing about was detailed and very useful evaluations for each evaluator by Aaron-san, who attended the meeting despite his bad physical condition. His tips for evaluation made us more motivated. Thanks a lot!
All in all, we had another lovely meeting with a lot of smiles 😊