Ginza! November 26th, 2017

1. Introduction Ginza Toastmasters Club held their latest regular meeting on Sunday, 26th November at Matsu-Hiro building in Ginza. We were treated to three high-quality speeches, an exciting table topic session centred around communciation and a wonderful workshop from the regular member with the guests.

2. Roles Drian Von-Golden, President of the Club, opened the meeting by welcoming everyone with a special attention to guests. There were 12 guests, including TM Ayumi Nakamura, TM Bin Tang, TM Emily Zhang, TM Hayato Ishida, TM Junko tahara, TM Makiko Mizuuchi, TM Masayo Arai, Matt (from Meetup), TM Momoyo Kuwahara, TM Takako Hashimoto, TM Tomoaki Uchiki and TM Tomomi Takeshima. He then invited us warm-up exercises and handed it over to Toastmasters Yuki who explained the running order of the meeting. He then introduced Timekeeper Tomomi, Yeah counter Emily(she accepted the role on the day), Vote Counter Bin, and Grammarian Uchiki, and Momoyo, who declared “pull ‘one’s punch” as the word of the day, meaning that “to restrain one's commentary or criticism to avoid offending or upsetting someone. (usually used in the negative like don't pull your punches!).

3. Song of the Day Yuki chose “Where the street have no name” US, 1987. It was at that moment that we learned that Japanese addressing system is a very unique among the countries. In America at least, it is second nature that addresses are based on roads. Each road has a name and the buildings are numbered according to the road. But what about Japan? Where are the street names? There are none! The Japanese can’t tell what the name of the street they lived on is.

4. Table Topic Session Table Topics Master Yossy then organized a great impromptu session, during which Drian, Uchiki, and Bin discussed the topic of the communication– Adlerian Psychology(complaint vs encouragement). Highlights included Drian’s business couch tips, Uchiki’s persuasive mentor experience and Bin’s family top-down relationship of mother and daughter.

5. Prepared speech After the short break, the first speaker was Takako Hashimoto, with her CC #7 (Your body speaks) titled “Over-protected, Kahogo no Kahoko”. “Kahogo” is a Japanese drama that Kahoko is a naive young lady, and relies on her mother for everything in her life but one day, Kahoko meets a young man who grew up in a completely opposite environment. She shared 3 things that she learnt from “Kahogo”. She highly recommended this drama because of the great character development- where it can be seen for almost all characters, especially Kahoko.

Next to speak was Eva with Competition & Other speeches #5(education presentation) titled “How to apply Choice Theory to your life”. Choice of Theory was offered by Dr. Glasser. He puts a square focus on the power of choice, breaking free of the external control of others. Choice theory contends that we are internally motivated, not externally motivated by rewards and punishment. The application of Choice Theory on Eva’s personal life motivated us more by our internal needs rather than traditional external needs.

The last speaker was Ayumi with her CC #9 (persuade with power) titled “Minority Support”. This was an inspiring speech about learning to face fears with LGBT support issues. Ayumi explained how joining Rainbow Toastmasters has been somewhat of a shock to her. Support can be helpful for people but only if LGBT people feel comfortable enough to get it. We learned that one of the challenges in reaching out for support is that LGBT people feel that non-LGBT will not understand their specific situation.

6. Workshop Then Paul led the special workshop of topic “Diversity Empathy Leadership”. Acting one is “Privilege”. What privilege do we have and luck in our life? We discussed about the identities we came up with in the activity at the beginning pf the workshop in accordance with the ground rule. Acting two is “Empathy and Sympathy”. We shared a careful observation that invisible member participation in case where in Toastmasters empathy might be required. We cannot solve the issue but should think about the power of trust-emotional connection.

After the Workshop, General Evaluator Yuko invited two evaluators. We heard from the wonderful two evaluators – Junko for Takako and Drian for Eva-, and open evaluation for Ayumi. We were gripped from beginning to end!

7. Awards Best Speaker Award Takako Hashimoto

Best Table Topics Award Bin Tang

Enthusiasm Award Yuko Honda

8. Next meeting The next meeting will take place at Kyobashi-Plaza-Kuminkaikan, on Sunday, 24th December (Christmas Eve), at 14:00. Eva will take TMOD. Come over to practice your public skills!