MeetingMinutes

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 [...]

Minutes Meeting number 208 was a special meeting with a Christmas theme. I gave a very quick opening remark introducing this year's Chinese character which is 災(pronounced sai) which means disaster. I said I wanted the meeting to be a different sai i.e. 祭which means festival. We welcomed 3 guests. The more the merrier! TMoE was SK who conducted the meeting beautifully. The word of the evening was 'present'. It was perfect for the occasion. All role explanations were super smooth and I loved them. The gift exchange session was a lot [...]

Minutes Tonight's TMoE was KK, who was a first-timer. He was thoroughly prepared. He had even printed out the script and used variety of expressions to facilitate the meeting. The word of the evening was 'versus'. What I liked about his introduction of helpers was that he mentioned that there was a first time guest so the explanations should be catered for their needs. Yes members already know what helpers do so we should explain the roles focusing on guests. The timer's explanation was very good. He summarized his presentation in a very efficient manner without blinding [...]

Minutes Today we had a different meeting than usual. Since TM KS is going to be our representative for the upcoming Rookies Contest at the beginning of December, we had a meeting focused on contest. We had a slightly longer table topics session than usual led by TM MS. She asked 5 questions all of which were very topical. I did think some of the questions were very tough such as 'should a journalist go to a very dangerous area for reporting activities?' but I think it is nice to occasionally stretch yourselves to answer challenging questions. [...]