Kibasen

Kibasen, or kiba-sen, either way its one of the craziest games I've been educated on recently. A couple of days ago I was talking to a student about their sports festival (we probably just call it a sports day). During this day, he played kibasen, naturally I asked what it is. Here goes:

Kiba means "on horseback", sen means "to fight", so kibasen is like a mock calvary battle. Three people make some sort of platform with their arms, and a fourth person rides up the top (the rider). The student I was talking to made up one of the three down bottom. Now there were about 150 kids, two teams of 75 doing this. So they had about 18 groups of these "horses" on one team. The aim of the game is to push the rider off their platform. So basically, all 36 groups run into the field and try to push each other off. The bottom three are also allowed to kick and shove with their shoulders, since their hands are preoccupied. Its crazy, its actually a pretty violent-sounding sport. UNTIL... it was cleared up. This game/sport is very popular in Japan among elementary and highschool kids. The non-violent one has the rider wearing a hat, and the aim is to knock off the other team's hats, rather than push them off. Even girls play the non-violent one. Very cool.

Another student mentioned something named esosa, or esasa, which to me sounded like some kind of Man Power thing for highschool kids. When I tried to describe it to some other students to see if they recognised it, they kinda did, and referred to it as a muscle dance. All very suspect... Boys in trunks on stage flexing their muscles. That's basically it.

Two good comments from recent times...
Me: How long does it take to get to school from home?
Student: 3 years.
(followed by some quick correction)

Me: So you don't have to look after the dog anymore? That's good!
Student: It's very happy for me.