Winter 11 Featuring: The Buckingham Palace Awards Ceremony ...

ESUJ Tournament
The next morning saw the beginning
of the ESUJ tournament held, as
always, at the 1964 Olympic Centre.
This was an excellent introduction to
Japanese debating at university level
for us, as judging several debates in
quick succession allowed to us to
evaluate the quality so that we could
appropriately pitch the level of our
training and speaking for the rest of
the tour. The standard was, in fact,
excellent and all of us saw teams that
would excel at many European
competitions and at the World
Championships.
The first day of the tournament
involved us all in judging the four
preliminary closed rounds and giving
some feedback to teams at the end of
the day. We thoroughly enjoyed the
motions, especially those specific to
Japan, which opened our eyes to issues
we have never previously considered.
On one memorable occasion,
Ambassador Numata was induced to
lead the rest of the judging panel in a
rendition of the national anthem.
We returned the next day to judge the
break rounds (quarter finals, semi
finals and final). These continued to be
of a high standard, even when dealing
with difficult motions. We also split up
to run several training sessions over the
course of the day. Eoghan and
Catherine very much enjoyed the time
they spent with middle school students.
This session was challenging and it
took some while to adapt to the vast
range of English fluency in the room
but with the help of the occasional
translation by Mrs Okada, it turned
out to be a successful introduction to
formal arguments.
Jo also ran a session on rights whilst
John spent some time discussing
strategy. These workshops were very
well attended and raised a set of tricky
questions for the team to deal with.
We were approached several times by
teams looking for more advanced
coaching, and specifically aimed at the
World Debating Championship, which
uses a different format of debating.
We also staged a display debate in the
magnificent main hall where
Catherine and John proposed a
motion which had been used in the
preliminary debates the previous day:
‘This House Believes Western nations
should continue to freeze all Libyan
assets until fair elections have been
held’. Eoghan and Jo opposed.
Possibly the oddest part of this
experience was debating underneath
giant photographs of our own smiling
heads! Eventually, with the aid of
several LSE (‘Libyan School of
Economics’) jokes, the opposition
prevailed.
We moved straight on to judging the
final round of this extraordinarily well
run tournament, where Hirotsubashi
University won from proposition on
the motion ‘This House Would make
language and history tests compulsory
for immigrants’. We would like to
congratulate all those who competed
and especially the organisers and
volunteers of this tournament. They
had us gasping at the efficiency of it all
on more than one occasion.
Akita
The next morning Mr Agata escorted
us up to Akita, an area we were
excited to visit despite persistent
warnings about the weather in the
region. The weather turned out to be
nearly identical to that in London, so
we felt right at home. We enjoyed a
tour of the very impressive campus of
Akita International University before
settling down to our third display
debate. John and Jo channelled
personal employment frustrations into
arguing for ‘This House Believes real
life experience is more important than
university’ against Eoghan and
Catherine (both soon to be happily
employed). The crowd and the
newly-established debating society at
Akita were very engaged and we
thoroughly enjoyed their company and
enthusiasm.
That evening we were taken to dinner
by Mr Agata, Prof. Mark Williams,
Vice-President of the university, and
Hiroya Ichikawa, the head of Akita’s
International Business Faculty. We
were interested to hear more about the
ethos behind this unusually outward
looking institution and to make a case
for debating finding a central place
amongst its innovative curriculum.
Especially appreciated was the sharing
of a bottle of Mr Agata’s favourite
local Sake with him.
Osaka
We flew south to Osaka, the next
morning, on an amusingly small plane
and were greeted by Mika, who
ensured we safely found our hotel
amongst the vast sprawl of the city.
Almost immediately, we managed to
get ourselves thoroughly lost whilst
attempting to sightsee, ending up
amongst a concrete factory and several
old men playing cards. We were
rescued in time to head to Osaka
Prefecture University for our debate to
which we welcomed a member of
their debating society on to each of
our teams.
Eoghan’s winning streak was finally
broken by John and Catherine
opposing the motion ‘This House
Would introduce quota for women on
corporate boards’, a topic well
received by the audience. This was a
debate in which a translation of each
speech was provided at the conclusion
of each speaker’s remarks. Afterwards,
we were treated to a wonderful dinner
by the debating society at a nearby
restaurant, which was a favourite with
local students. We very much enjoyed
this rare opportunity to spend an
extended period with students in a
thriving debating society.
Kyoto
Several students from the Osaka leg of
the tour were kind enough to
accompany us to Kyoto the next
morning and to guide us around
several of the temples. Despite the
pouring rain that follows Jason on all
these trips, we loved seeing these
beautiful, ancient buildings and relied
on steaming bowls of ramen and
tempura to see us through the day. We
were also fascinated to catch a glimpse
of several geisha piling into a taxi in
order to avoid the rain.
DIALOGUE 27