Cisco Japan Toastmasters Club Special Meeting in U.S. Embassy Housing Compound

What a precious night I had! That was most likely my first and last chance of my life getting into the U.S. embassy housing compound, a small U.S. surrounded by a wall inside Japan.

Cisco Japan Toastmasters Club's October 18 meeting was a special one. They made a special "offsite" meeting outside of their home venue. The special meeting was at a hall in the U.S. embassy housing compound. It's a 10-minute walk from their usual venue in Tokyo Mid Town in Roppongi. In the compound, every single thing seemed to have been brought from the U.S.

15 Cisco Japan Toastmasters Club members, 12 guests and one dog gathered in a spacious hall with a genuine lectern and a wide monitor equipped.

The meeting started with guest calls, then proceeded to the table topics session. Steve, the Topicsmaster set "Halloween" as the topics theme and asked four questions related to ghosts, zombies, scary movies, and a haunted house. The first topics speaker was Victor, the club president. Then, three guests volunteered to make their topics speeches. I'm impressed with three guests' impromptu speeches with clear U.S. English, wit, imagination, power and humour, even though it was their very first time to try table topics. Remarkable!

After the table topics session, three prepared speeches were presented by the members of Cisco Japan Toastmasters Club. They demonstrated a variety of speech types: an informative speech by Harumi, an analytical speech by Dice, and a comical speech with a prop by Kazuyuki. Let me thank Rajesh, the VPE and David, the Toastmaster of the evening for their considerate arrangement. Thank you very much!

The longer break time is the Cisco Japan's fun part. 25 minutes of chatting over snacks and drinks with members and guests was a great opportunity to share comments and Q&A each other. I guess many of them made friends.

The final session was the evaluation. Cisco's two evaluators provided very useful suggestions. I hope I could be a little help as one of the evaluators. Ah Counter, Grammarian, and General Evaluator reported precise and educational comments. I bet the evaluation session was a fresh and notable experience for non-Toastmasters guests and to learn the Toastmasters secrets of how people receive feedback to improve each other.

It was my very first time to visit a Toastmasters club meeting held in a place where the U.S. presides. I only met 11 guests there, but I felt their cheerfulness and motivation. People I had chances to talk with asked me many questions on Toastmasters education curriculum, contest sequences, membership, and organization. I was so happy that I may be of some help.

Thank you, Yuki, Division C Director for letting me visit the meeting on your behalf. It was fun to enjoy an atmosphere of State Department different from elsewhere. As a member of Toastmasters International, we have a lots of chances to visit places where usually cannot get in, like corporate offices, schools, U.S. bases, private facilities, and virtual space. My adventure continues.