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| Japan hosts world snowball fight championship |
| 2004-02-26 |
| Hat tip: Murdoc Online. Edited for brevity. On winter evenings, men gather outside a hotel in Japan’s 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 other’s 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 sport’s tactical challenges. Sunday practices turned into daily training after work. A year ago, Mr. Miyashita’s 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 won’t 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 |
| #6 Somehow being burned alive doesn't sound like my idea of a good time. Unless we saw Godzilla get a tan from the Ray. " He has a tan. That infidel! We refuse to play! " *Shreik/roar* " No! Not our collection of Hijab dressed women magazines! " |
| Posted by: Charles 2004-2-26 8:18:56 PM |
| #5 I'd see if I could get The Zionist Death Ray on loan... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2004-2-26 8:07:13 PM |
| #4 I bought a plastic snowball scooper at a local sporting goods store. Now if it were only metal instead.... |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-2-26 4:15:54 PM |
| #3 Yeah Godzilla would be my pick too, Mothra throws like a gurl. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-2-26 4:08:16 PM |
| #2 Japan: Land of the Rising Snowball. |
| Posted by: Mike 2004-2-26 3:42:07 PM |
| #1 I know who my first pick would be for my team. " I pick Godzilla. " |
| Posted by: Charles 2004-2-26 3:10:51 PM |