MeetingMinutes

What is Toastmasters? Hello everyone, this is Y.T, President of Visionaries TMC. I have been a member of this club, or Toastmasters, for three years. I really enjoy our activities and would recommend many people to start Toastmasters journey. However, as soon as I introduce Toastmasters to my friends or colleagues, any people just say, "What the hell is Toastmasters...?" So, today, I'd like to introduce what Toastmasters is. Toastmasters International websites says about itself as the follows: “Toastmasters International is a non-profit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of clubs. Headquartered in Englewood, [...]

Minutes Tonight's meeting was the first one after the huge typhoon hit Kanto area on 12th Oct. Everyone was relieved to see each other without any injuries. We realised that gathering twice a month regularly is a very precious thing. Considering such a situation, meeting topics were pretty much linked with "disaster" or "risk management". In the Table Topics Session, MU asked some questions about disaster, such as "Have you prepared anything for the typhoon?" or "What will you bring with you to the evacuation spot?" Only one week after the typhoon and being disaster-conscious, each member shared [...]

Minutes Tonight we were supposed to have a presentation by a Toastmaster from another club who had set up an in-house club within a multinational company. Unfortunately she could not make it anymore so we quickly had to come up with additional things to fill the agenda. First of all, during the opening session our president conducted an activity to learn about TMC's mentorship program. We actually did not know the difference between mentoring and coaching well so the president wanted to share that with members. Tonight's TMoE was SS who conducted the meeting smoothly. Kudos to him [...]

Minutes We had our final meeting in Heisei! I hope everybody had a good time. At first our president introduced the list of 100 people who were considered most influential by the TIME magazine. If you want to know more about them, please check the following link out; http://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2019/ TMoE was MU who was a first timer who did a wonderful facilitation. She made nice comments after each speaker. Table topics master was EI. Not only did she ask questions she also shared some events which took place during the course of Heisei such as the introduction of [...]

Minutes A new fiscal/academic year started in Japan and many of us had a fresh start, too. Some members left the club because of changes in their personal lives but for the first time in about a year KT visited our club. He just missed a payment but will be reinstated as a member very soon. We also welcomed a new member, HW who we are sure will give many great speeches going forward. Our president wanted to pay respect to a very old activity of VTMC called good and new so decided to do it for the [...]

Minutes We had a nice cozy meeting. The number of attendees was small. There were only 11 of us. Still we leverage the small turnout to our advantage. Our president decided to interview HK as she represented our club at the area contest the other day. It was fun to ask her questions and hear her answers. TMoE was YT, our dedicated VPE. The word of the evening was sharp and indeed he facilitated the meeting in a sharp fashion. The table topics master was SK who asked many seasonal questions such as 'What is the most memorable graduation you have [...]

Minutes #212 meeting has started with the question from our president.He asked members which Chinese characters might be used for the name of the new era. The order was to choose one character but some teams actually came up with a full name for it. Our club really excited about finding out what it is.Tonight's topicsmaster was SM who asked many philosophical questions. She said that at night she was contemplating about a lot of things. They were all so thought-provoking such as 'Where do you go when you need to escape realities?' and 'What is your motivation to [...]

Minutes Tonight's TMoE was AM. Due to many cancellations she must have had a hard time but she facilitated the meeting impeccably. Topicsmaster was HS who came up with many questions with the theme of history. He asked interesting questions such as 'who is your favourite historical figure/building/novel?' and engaged the audience very well. Even people who were unlikely to be appointed had their minds rolling with these intellectually challenging topics. There were only 2 speakers. The first speaker was EW, who shared the reasons why she stays in Japan. She talked about three factors. It was very [...]

Minutes We felt like we were in a movie theater. Our club's president played the video of the champion's speech from last year's international speech contest during the opening. It was fun to be in a dark room and watch the video. Big thanks to MK and HS who prepared the audio-visual environment. YU's speaker did a good job.Meeting #210 had a problem to solve; there were only 2 speakers! But TMoE MS had dealt with this situation before. She quickly asked around to have 2 evaluators for each speaker. Thanks to her effort we were able to have [...]

Minutes We had our very first meeting of this year. I felt that there was a lot of energy in the room. The turnout was good. The topicsmaster had of course the theme of 'new year'. HK asked some good old questions such as 'How was your new year holiday' and 'What is your new year resolution?' as well as something a little bit trickier such as 'Is there any ritual that you do every year at this time of year?' There were 4 prepared speeches which struck good balance. The first speech was given by MU about her [...]