Snowball fight

Took part in the annual "International Snowball Fight" in Koide (next town to mine) today. It was really fun!

Funny-looking snowman shrine

There were people making big snow sculptures...Doraemon on one side...
...and Anpanman (a popular cartoon hero made of red bean bun) on the other. The guys posing in front are the sculptors and painters.

Snowman mascots on the snow stage during the opening ceremony. Each team had to carry a placard with its name on it and parade around like during the Olympics opening ceremony.

There were 4 courts. A surprising number of people took part. There were 170 teams that registered. Each team comprised 5 members. The winning adult team gets the famous Niigata Koshihikari rice...and the winning kids' team gets a trip to Disneyland!

There was also a costume competition...and boy, were there some funny costumes.

These blondes were actually men in drag. They actually brought a hi-fi set along and did a dance before their match. Their friends sportingly dressed up as well and joined them for the dance and cheered them on during the match. They were a super funny team and they played well too.

And the team captain had a swan's head sticking out from under his skirt...

These guys wore their underwear on the outside, ala Superman-fashion, and stuffed snow down the front

Rules of the game: Each match is 3 mins long. Each member has 3 lives, if you're a guy, or 5 lives, if you're a girl. The team with more surviving members left at the end of 3 mins wins.

My team...the SNOW WARRIERS! Fierce name huh...I suggested it. Erm, but we lost both matches in the preliminary round. For the first match, we did not understand the rules (which were completely in Japanese) properly. We thought that the team with more lives left wins. We had more lives left but one less surviving member. Wrong strategy. For the second match, I think we were all rather tired and we all got killed before the 3 mins was up.

Top (L-R): Junior (Brazil), our Team Manager Kathryn (New Zealand), Kate (USA) and Dean (Canada). Bottom: Raza (Pakistan) and me. We were a truly international team. More international than the competition, which despite its name only had 3 foreign teams out of 170.

Since we did not make it through the preliminaries, we went to get food instead...

Look, crab soup (or in Japanese, kani nabe)! Kani means crab and nabe is a hot pot of soup lah. Only 200-yen (S$3) for a bowl with half a crab and 4 long legs. Bargain!