Ultimate Frisbee

So I picked up a new sport when I moved here last summer - Ultimate Frisbee. You may be thinking a bunch of hippies on the beach, smoking weed and having a lazy throw around (at least that's what I thought I was signing up for) - think again! It's the equivalent of doing wind sprints up and down a basketball court for about 40 minutes straight. I played in two tournaments lately, the Asagiri Beach Tournament, near Kobe/Akashi, and the Tajima tournament up north. Here's the pics:

My Team: "X-Force Alpha Super Cream Monkeys (I think that's the name)" we took 5th out of 20 teams in the Tajima tournament. Not bad!

The big group photo from the beach tournament. It was a good time!

I actually got super banged up from playing on the sand - big roadrash on my leg, and cut up elbows from diving around. It's so much harder on your body to play on sand!

So the cool thing about this game is that there are no refs, and there is a really good sportsmanship feeling about the game - the teams do their own officiating, and then they each do a (silly) cheer for each other after the match. Some teams even award the other teams with gift prizes (I got a bottle of booze from a Tokyo team at Tajima!). It's cool because you get really amped up during the game, but afterwards it's just good times.

Tajima was a two-day affair, and they had a big BBQ after the first day. It was drizzling the entire day, so the grass was nice and wet - you could do diving catches and slide out without getting banged up (man it was fun). SO, the BBQ was on the side of a ski resort, and after the eating was over we took the trays and hiked up the hill and had sled races down the hill. It was a bad idea, but really fun, unfortunately one of the guys on my team, Charlie, slid into the guard-rail and busted his rib and had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Bummer!

My buddy Ben, his acid is about to kick in. Whoa dude, look at that tree melting!!

That there hill in the back is the one we did'a slide down. That's the crazy Kiwi, Luke, on the right.

My buddy Zack, from Texas and his Japanese gimp. Makoto (l) and Yoshi (r) from my team.

Frisbee is a cool sport with some cool folks, and they have games in some really cool places! I'm psyched I started up playing, it's a good time.