Fast Stacking

I apologize for my absence over the past few weeks, but now that I finally seem to have the time to write, and everything finished up, I bring you two shiny new (albeit still unfortunately late) blog posts; this one and the one to follow it later on. With any luck, I'll also have a third completed on time.

It's just my luck that my body decided it wanted to hate me this weekend as well; I've suddenly caught a cold and a sore throat. Hopefully some C.C.Lemon will help me out (even though I've reluctantly heard it may not have any Vitamin C in it at all)...

Getting back on track, the theme for this post happened to be "Sports in Japan".

As much as I thought about it, finding an interesting topic that deviated from the normal posts of Baseball and Volleyball was becoming increasingly hard to manage. (Speaking of which I was very surprised at the number of Volleyball posts from my classmates.)

With an increasing air of frustration, I felt a bit trapped. It's not that I haven't seen any sports recently, for they're everywhere. I especially see a lot of school children kicking around soccer balls in the local school yards and around my neighborhood. It's times like this I almost regret not looking a bit harder for the Kendo club here at Kansai Gaidai, although I'm positive I could never keep up with their strict schedule. It's a sport I miss.

But to break my digression, I thought, 'There has to be something no one has though of, something I know I've seen...'
Thinking back, I remembered my time spent on spring break, specifically at Tokyo Tower. There, in front of the Guinness book of World Records showroom, was a Japanese man furiously stacking cups.

While I unfortunately wasn't thinking of taking photos at the time, I only have a video of the man. However, something like this is probably better depicted in motion anyway.
From a photographer's standpoint, it would have been cool to see if I could get the stacker's hands to blur for a dramatic effect.


Behind him, a video played on repeat of children stacking cups at national competitions. They all seemed to be foreign, however, and the video was dubbed into Japanese. But that doesn't mean Cup Stacking has not taken shape in Japan as well.

On Sunday, March 16th, The Japan Sport Stacking Championships were held. As the article says, children and adults from all over Japan came to watch and participate. What's more surprising is that the majority of players are young, from extremely early ages to a cut-off of about 20 years old. That isn't to say adults don't play as well, but it is much more popular with children.
Frankly, I had no idea that this sport even reached Japan, and with such fury. I had, in passing, heard of it in the states a few years ago when I caught it on TV, but had no idea the sport held out, let alone traveled the globe.

Upon browsing this website, there seems to be a great deal of cup stacking in Japan, but it all seems to be centered around Tokyo, and even more specifically, Tokyo Tower.

One foreign family posted an interesting article about how their son has been cup stacking in Japan, and had attended a competition inside Tokyo Tower back in December of 2007. He was also attending classes for the sport at the time.

To me, Cup Stacking seems like one of those "sports" that originates from people who seem to have too much free time. Something that catches on with a younger crowd, or something you reminisce having played when you were in middle school with your best friends. It reminds me of trends like Pogs or old forgotten card games. But Speed Stacking has lived on, even to become an international sport.

With that, I leave you with 6-year-old Kaichi Kondo of Japan; a record-holding Cup Stacker.



JapanProbe.com: Cup Stacking Boy - video powered by Metacafe

Impressive.