It's the 60m Wooden Shoes Competition. - by jay pettitt
Thief13x on 17/11/2007 at 01:28
now thats a contact sport:D :o
Agent Subterfuge on 17/11/2007 at 07:18
The lead runners expression looks about right.
Yup.
kidmystik101 on 17/11/2007 at 07:42
...
Only in asia.
demagogue on 17/11/2007 at 15:41
When I was a teacher in Japan, my students actually competed in these events for Sports day ... they had to train the whole month ... there was this race, another one where two guys carry a pole and the third hangs on to it, or two people tie their shoelaces together, all sorts of goofy things, as well as more standard track events.
So I ran track and cross country very competitively and took it all very seriously (in CC we got 2nd at state in Texas), I remember days training so hard I threw up ... so was paying a lot of attention to their training.
To give you an idea of the different philosophy they have to this: I remember a distinct surreal moment when they were making groups for the relays. Now where I come from, you want to get the 4 fastest people on a relay team because you want to win.
They went out of their way to put the slowest and fastest kids on the same teams! Why??? I asked. "We don't want there to be an unfair advantage for any one team." My gut reaction was: it's a fucking relay race!! Of course you want an unfair advantage by having faster people. You want to win the race! But they didn't see that at all. For them, the best outcome was all four relay teams passing the finish at the same time. It was more practicing a show for the parents than an actual competition. From a Western perspective it was surreal!
Lhet on 17/11/2007 at 22:13
Very interesting. Of course taking something like this seriously already shows the difference in culture.
Shug on 18/11/2007 at 09:28
Yeah, I experienced a sports carnival in Japan while on exchange back in high school - they have some seriously bizarre shit going on. One seemed to involve picking up tennis balls and throwing them into a large net before the other team could. Another had two teams run hard at each other from opposite sides of the oval to try and retrieve as many pieces of timber as possible, one at a time. I also managed to avoid one where two guys carried a third on a pole slung over their shoulders - due to its high testicular injury risk
jay pettitt on 18/11/2007 at 12:15
There's the thing - there's not enough 'carnival' in western athletics.
It's fairly obvious to work out where things like javelin, running, jumping, shot put and such originate from. The mind boggles why team timber stealing and three man wooden shoe race found there way into popular culture.
