Yukigassen

The first Saturday back from Taiwan, Simona and I drove down to Wakasa for the Western Japan Yukigassen. Yukigassen is basically an organized team snowball fight/capture the flag, and the winner of this Wakasa tournament gets a free trip to Hokkaido for the all-Japan tournament!

The JETs in Tottori formed 4 teams. Pleading political asylum from Dubya oppression, I was granted status as an honorary Canadian and joined Team Canada. Jason, pictured here, is the #1 Canadian.

Each team is allowed 90 snowballs for the 3 game match. These molds for making snowballs were provided for the tournament. I think Eric here was trying to fortify our snowballs with pebbles.

The line up of our first 7. The fields are divided into quarters: endzones (where snowballs are kept) and two mid-zones. Out of a team of 7, there are 3 backs (these are the only ones who can go into the endzone to fetch snowballs) and 4 forwards. Backs cannot go into enemy territory, and forwards cannot go back into the endzone. A flag is planted at the endzone/half line.

In the heat of the battle, obstacles and covers are scattered over the 10m x 40m field. I am #6 here (a back, although at our first match, we were all confused and I thought I was a forward).

The tournament is double-elimanation format. And it took us all but 2 matches to be eliminated. In our defense, we did win one game, on this suicide dive for the flag by Kevin. We promptly lost the next game somehow, even with a 6-man to 2-man lead. As the coach, I yelled for the team to be conservative and stay on the defense until the time run out--instead they went for an all-out blitz, lost 3 men and the flag. Idiots.

The other JET teams didn't do so well either. Most of the teams in the field there were an assortment of baseball and softball teams with wicked throws. We were simply overmatched,

but we kept our Canadian pride. Hail to the United States of Canada!