Regular Meeting #476 was held at Mina Park with the attendees of 23 active members and 4 guests (including AD TM Tanabe)

    TM M.H. visited us with her 4-month-old baby boy. We were so happy to see them.

    Word of the Day “Ecstatic “was introduced by Ah/Uh Counter TM E.M. He explained it by reading the summary of “The Gift of The Magi.” By O’ Henry.

Business Session
    President N.N. announced that Area Contest will be held on April 1, 2018 in Odawara city.
    VPE M.K. announced the result of the survey about the different speech patterns trial. Pattern A was chosen with 16 pro-votes out of 19. (Pattern B got no vote. Pattern C got 3 votes) Also he introduced some opinions from the members.
    The In-House Speech Contest will be held on Feb.10. TMs who want to join the contest should contact VPE by the end of December. TM Y.T. will serve as Contest Chair.

Joke Session
    Joke Master Y.T. told us funny stories based on facts.

Prepared Speech Session 
    TMOD Y.H. introduced each speaker mentioning his/her plan for coming winter holiday.
    1^st speaker TM T.K.                      “The man has great ability beyond genius”
    2^nd speaker TM .LC.                     “Foods we can’t eat together”
    3^rd speaker TM M.H.                     “See You Next Time”
    4^th speaker TM Y.W.                     “Watabeli Hills”               

Table Topics Session
    Table Topics Master TM A.U. (He was pretending to be an exchange student Greg from Canada) asked questions about Japanese New Year.
    1. What is Ozoni?(お雑煮)          to TM A.M.
    2. What is Nengajyo?(年賀状)   To TM C.M.
    3. What is Kou-Haku Utagassen? (紅白歌合戦)   To TM M. K.
    4. What is Hatsu-Moude?(初詣)   To TM H.S.
    5. What is Toshi-koshi Soba?(年越し蕎麦) To TM K.O.                                          

    It was quite fun to be asked questions from Canadian student Greg and five members who were called made good answers. Two of them even returned questions to Greg, that was quite new!!

Intermission: 10 minutes

Evaluation Session
    General Evaluator TM K.K. introduced 4 Evaluators, TMs T.O., Y.U., K.T., and N.S., and each Evaluator gave appropriate feedbacks with some suggestions.
    Then the General Evaluator concluded the session with valuable comments on every part of the meeting.

The Award Presentation
     TMOD Award was given to TM A.U. for his unique idea at the Table Topics Session.
     Best Table Topics Speaker: TM C.M.
     Best Evaluator: TM K.T.
     Best Speaker: TM Y.W.

     At the end of the meeting, one of the guests Ms. T.S. who had already visited us three times expressed her wish to join the club, that was really nice.

    The meeting was adjourned almost on time.

                                                                           By Y. H.

Award Winners
 

 

Year-end Party was held following the regular meeting from 5 to 8 p.m. on Dec. 9th at Mina Park.

    The number of people was 30, including 4 guests. 
    It was of POTLUCK style and we prepared 4 kinds of foods, red, green, white and others. The red foods were main dishes, green foods were side dishes, white foods were carbohydrates, and others were soft and alcoholic drinks.

    The party was started with the toast by President N.N. 
    We talked and laughed enjoying potluck foods and drinks.
    TM N.S. introduced entertainingly the new member TM Y. I. and 3 guests, telling their episodes.  We came to know unknown sides of them.

    We played a party game called FLASH under the rules customized somewhat. This game was very simple but very exciting.After we played 5 rounds, TM Y.H. won the first place.Top 10 people got scratch cards the same as in the last year. 
    Among them TM K. T. luckily got a 5th grade prize.

    Many thanks to the party committee members: TM T.O., TM E. M., TM T. K., and the official photographer TM Y.W.

                                                             By A.U.

                                  

    The regular meeting No. 475 was held on November 25 at Tsujido Library with 17 active members and 1 guest. As usual, we had four sessions including Joke, Prepared speech, Table Topics and Evaluation.

    Firstly, Joke master TM T. K. made a very successful opening for this meeting. Instead of telling jokes, he gave a series of quick thinking quizzes shown below and unique answers from the audience made the meeting room full of laugh. TM T.K. told that those quizzes are used to find generalist who can think flexible enough.
    Quiz 1: There is an elephant and a refrigerator. How do you put the elephant into the refrigerator?
    Quiz 2: There is a giraffe and a refrigerator, how do you put the giraffe into the refrigerator?
    Quiz 3: A lion asked to have an animal meeting, which animal cannot join the meeting?
    Quiz 4: There is a big river where dangerous alligators live, how do you cross the river?

     After the funny Joke session, we had four prepared speakers to deliver their speeches.
    The first speaker was our new member who just joined us in this October, TM M.I. She made her first speech titled “The Ice I want to break is ?”. She introduced herself　very clearly.
    The second speaker was TM T.K., the title of her speech was “Roast to my Grandmother”.
    The third speaker was TM E.M., his speech’s title was “My Granddaughters Ray and Risa”.
    The last speaker was TM C.M., he made a special speech about a book review, the book’s name was “Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life”. According to the book, he told us life’s most important “things”: health, relationships, passion, growth, and contribution. After his speech, a Q&A session of about 3 minutes was set. 

    The third session was Table Topics, which was hosted by TM J.Y. She elaborately prepared questions with beautiful seasonal pictures. She asked each speaker to select a favorite season at first, and then a question appeared. A lot of attendees said that was a unique Table Topics session.

    The last session was Evaluation, General Evaluator TM Y.T. hosted it.
The Evaluators, TM T.I., TM T.O. and TM M.H. evaluated the first, second and the third prepared speaker’s speeches, respectively. They told their impressions on how well each prepared speech was delivered and also gave suggestions on the points to be improved. Since the fourth speech had a Q&A session, no evaluation was given for it.

Award Presentation
    TMOD Award : TM Y. H. for her taking a substitute role on short notice.
    Best Table Topics Award: TM Y. H.
    Best Evaluator Award: TM M. H.
    Best Prepared Speech Award: TM M. I.

                                                                                       By L. C.