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Japan hosts world snowball fight championship
Hat tip: Murdoc Online. Edited for brevity.On winter evenings, men gather outside a hotel in Japanâs frozen north to heat snow with an oil stove in a vinyl tent. When the powdery stuff becomes malleable, they shovel it into a mold resembling a giant cupcake tray, and stamp out 1,000 perfectly round snowballs of regulation size: no less than 2.56 inches in diameter and no more than 2.76 inches. For the next three hours, they throw these snowballs at one another, hoping to recapture the title their team, now called Skyward, won in 2001: the Showa Shinzan International Yukigassen, the de facto world snowball-fight championship. Children merely play games. It takes men to add rules and sponsors and make it a sport! Two teams of seven players each start with 90 snowballs and face off on a field as wide as a tennis court and 1Âœ times as long. The field features "shelters" -- 3-foot walls of snow that the players hide behind -- and a flag for each team, planted deep inside its half of the court. Players wearing protective helmets take opponents out of the game by hitting them with a ball. A team wins a three-minute set either by having the most players standing at the end, or by grabbing the otherâs flag. Matches are decided over three sets. Skyward evolved from a team formed seven years ago by Mr. Miyashita, who recruited talent from local baseball teams. They entered the competition as a lark but were soon hooked by the sportâs tactical challenges. Sunday practices turned into daily training after work. A year ago, Mr. Miyashitaâs team merged with another, won sponsorship from Japan Airlines Co., and was renamed Skyward. JAL and Sapporo Breweries sponsor the championship. All Skyward teammates, who range in age between 21 and 33, are single. "Everyone who gets married gives up snowball fighting" because of the big time commitment, says Mr. Miyashita. "Japanese wives wonât put up with it." If we got Randy Johnson in this, he would either A.) kill somebody, or B.) be completely useless because the snowballs would dissipate into steam in midflight. Posted by: Dar 2004-02-26 |
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