Flag Football in the Snow

The day before Christmas Eve, Shawn and I went with one of the students from my lab to play in a flag football tourney. The catch, of course, was that it is in the snow. I was a bit cold watching the first game of the day, but once the sun came out it was nice.

The event was fully sponsored by some meat company in town so they put on a bit spread of grilled noodles and marinated lamb BBQ (they call it gengis kahn). So we spent the day standing around in the snow, eating delicious food and in the end Shawn played 5 games and their team (the Gamblers - click to link to the team website) ended up winning the whole event with a narrow win over a high school team. As you could imagine, it was nail-biting good fun! Here is a picture of the lamb BBQ guy. He was cooking practically all day.

The games were essentially what we would see at home. Same rules, high fives on a good pass, teams playing up and allowing the girls to make incredible tape to tape touchdown runs. The only difference (and one that Shawn and I giggled at each time it happened) is that after the game the teams come together and line up at centre facing one another. The referee stands between them and reads out the score and acknoleges the winner. The instead of three cheers, of shaking hands, the teams bow to one another. It definately added a Japanese flavour to an otherwise north american day. Here is a photo of the Gamblers bowing to their opposition after a game.

We were the only white people at the event and there were many high school aged students in attendance. This made us the target of many Hello's followed by uproarious laughter (apparently speaking English to white people shows how tough you are to your friends). It also made Shawn the talk of the event. He played quaterback most of the time and I overheard the words "CFL" and "bery stlong" often when he was out playing. The other teams would set up for defence and play rock paper scissors to see who had to defend the foreign guy. As a side note, rock paper scissors is a common way that Japanese people decide all sorts of things like who has to cook dinner, who gets the last bowl of rice, or who has to read the mail for the annoying foreign researcher who can't even read her own mail.