Toastmaster Meeting 4th October 23
Starting at 21:00 Asia/Tokyo
Venue Online Club
11 attendees including 3 guests from Indonesia and India
Word of the Day: avid = extremely eager or interested
Ah, finally! We feel autumn breeze these days. Just 2 weeks ago when we had a regular meeting, we often talked about how hot it was. In Japan, autumn is said to be the best season for playing sports, eating delicious food, reading, and learning. I wish I could enjoy ALL the activities to the fullest this beautiful season! haha…
How about other members? They shared their updates in Small Talk Session. They enjoyed feeling the changing seasons with all five senses: by appreciating artworks at museums, attending a sports festival, running surrounded by beautiful nature, and practicing singing with a professional orchestra in Germany. Wow. I envy them!
Next, Thoughts for the Day Session conducted by Mikiko-san! She looked back on her childhood and depicted festival scenes at shrines in her area she still embraces including stalls piled with her favorite sweets and a portable shrines carried on a rear cart. Also, she illustrated the beautiful scenery like rice fields shining gold under the sun. She said she has felt privileged to have the opportunities to appreciate the autumn beauty once more. What a good story-teller she is! While listening to her talk, I could imagine myself enjoying the festivals in her area and remembered my own good and old days. Thank you, Mikiko-san! By the way, just after she finished her wonderful session, she left our meeting because she was feeling sick. What an avid and dedicated member, Mikiko-san! We hope you will get better soon!
Now it’s my turn as Joke Master. Speaking of jokes, I’m not good at telling jokes in English. So I introduced an episode from a book I read, which was hilarious to me. As an avid? reader of my blog, if you are interested in it, you can check it at the bottom of this blog. Thanks;) Let's move on to the next session: Prepared Speech. Tonight we had 2 wonderful speakers! First off, Aki-san! As an avid volunteer member, she has been involved with a lot of activities. She shared one of them with us, which encouraged us to take a quick action like her. It is Onigiri Action. It's so easy and fun, on top of that, it will contribute to reach SDGs, especially #2 (Zero Hunger) and #12 (Responsible Consumption and Production). Honorable readers, if you want to know more about it, go to the website: https://onigiri-action.com/en/
Look at this! It's one of the slides the second speaker Jesse-san made. Jaw-dropping! His speech was, what I call ;), hightech because the words came up one after another at the bottom of the slide while he was speaking. Not only the way he spoke, but also his speech itself was amazing! We can't wait for the next one :)
Last but not least, Table Topic Session conducted by Anita-san! Four speakers including honorable guests had a chance to share their ideas and experiences. All the questions were related to the autumn season: “What is your favorite fall holiday?”; “Can you describe the perfect fall day, using as much detail as possible and engaging all five senses?”; “Where would you like to go and see the leaves changing color this year?”; “What are your three favorits orange items?”
Those questions are interesting, don’t you think? The answers from each speaker were interesting too! Especially, one of honorable guests, Aditya-san’s answer. (Btw, his name means the sun in Sanskrit. It’s also intriguing!) In his country Indonesia, they don’t have 4 seasons and all they see is green colored tropical rain forests. One day he saw an orangutan in the forest while trekking. Wow. He enjoyed watching the endangered animal while embracing the nature.
Again, we learned a lot from each other. I recognized I made the right decision to attend the meeting tonight though I felt exhausted from work and really sleepy. But actually I couldn’t even blink because I was juggling among playing Joke Master and Timer’s role for each speaker, and taking notes for this blog during the meeting. Oh, then can I call myself an avid member of the club? ;)
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