Athletes' Thanksgiving Festival Part 2
Jan. 11th, 2008 12:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elennielNOTE: I hate LJ-cuts sometimes. 9 out of 10 times it'll screw up my formatting. WHY, LJ, WHY??
Gah. Only one big LJ-cut instead of separate ones for each segment because it's giving me wayyyy too much trouble at nearly 3 in the morning and I have work tomorrow. >.<
Picking up from where I left off. The last 1 hour of the ATF. :D
I'll just assume you know what's going on already from that other post so I don't need to explain it all over again. hehe
Part 2 dives straight into a swimming contest (I made a pun! XD ) between MatsuJun and Olympic gold medallist, Kitajima Kousuke. There's a very audible "uwah" coming from the other athletes at the mention of Kitajima.
Distance: 50m
MatsuJun explained that because he's just a normal person, he won't achieve anything without some sort of handicap or edge over the Olympic swimmer. So they - Jun & the staff - came up with a "secret plan."
Ta-da! A body suit :P (I like how he looks - from the waist up. The bottom half, especially the flippers, looks funny. hahahah)
First, Jun tries the 50m normally. Ie. with swimming trunks, not the body suit. His time: 50:06 seconds. Kitajima's record is 27:78. Even Jun admits that he "definitely can't do it!"
Then he puts on the suit and gets a little coaching too. (Don't know who the coach is - I forgot to note it down just now. ^^; )
Time improves to 37:58 seconds. I was really shocked. To cut 10 seconds off a race time is no joke. That suit's miraculous. Ah, the wonders of science. He practices more. But can he beat the champion?
Seems to think he can now. hahah
The bets come in, and 24 pick Kitajima, whereas 28 pick Jun. I'm surprised, and Jun's taken aback too. "Wow, there's a lot of faith in me, huh?"
Kokubun picks up a lady on Team Jun - Morimizato Shinobu - and says, "Morimizato-san, you voted for MatsuJun..."
"I believe in him!"
At which point Uchimura interrupts, "I'm sorry - is that a confession??"
XDD
His slightly embarrassed grin is cute. ♥
And Team Nino is singled out because the entire lot of them betted on Kitajima. Nino says something about it, but I didn't manage to catch enough to understand.
Then it's back to the VTR.
Jun's looking pretty darn serious, if you ask me...
And the race begins! (The numbers down in the right corner there are the timers. Blue box is Kitajima's time, and red is Jun's.)
Kitajima-senshi takes the lead first!
I added the black and white arrows here because it's kinda hard to see them. White for Kitajima, black for Jun.
And now I shall let the pictures and timers speak.
KYA~~ MatsuJun wins! 30:41! (The background music bothered me because it sounded so familiar... I couldn't decide it if was Star Trek: Voyager music, Indiana Jones music or Superman music. It sounded most like Superman music, but I'm not sure. hahah)
Kitajima finished 2 seconds after he did with a time of about 32 seconds.
Jun, I'm proud of you! (Even though I felt it was a tad unfair that Kitajima was using the breaststroke and you were using the faster freestyle... But he's an Olympic swimmer, so whatever. haha)
Jun can hardly believe it.
And Kitajima's a good sport.
Jun declares it's "cho kimochiii!"
(And I had to laugh at that after reading Kitajima's wikipedia article because apparently that's a phrase he popularised. LOL)
Kokubun asked Morimizato what she thinks now. She said, "Kakkoii desu!" XD
The next segment turns out to be more like a series of mini contests in the studio.
I. Apple-crushing, featuring Chie Honman from Team Ohno, who's apparently Korean.
He's a giant.
He makes his translator (that lady in black) look sooo tiny. Heck, he makes Kokubun look tiny too. (Okay. Let's stop and think for a moment: Chie-san is on Team Ohno...)
The challenge was to see how many apples he could crush in one hand in a minute. The teams had to bet on whether he could crush 10 or more, or less than 10 apples.
See Keio-boy thinking about it. hehe
And when Chie-san crushes apples... He crushes them.
o_O
II. Rope-climbing, featuring Yoshida Saori, a women's wrestler from Team Sho.
But first! Kokubun invites Arashi to try climbing 5m up a rope. Nino happily volunteers Riida for the job.
Much to Riida's dismay.
He does his best anyway.
Albeit in a rather odd manner...
He almost reached the 5m mark, but couldn't go farther and had to let go and fall back onto the mattress. He got up and exhaustedly stumbled off - presumably in the direction of home, because he waved as he staggered away. :P
But nah, of course he didn't go home. XD
Yoshida-san's challenge was to climb the 5m in 10 seconds or less (the bets were the same as for Chie-san's apple-crushing: 10 or more, or less than 10?) She made it in 10 seconds. Sugoi.
I like this shot from above when she was climbing up the rope. :P
III. Golf ball-lifting (for lack of a better name...), featuring three golfers from Team Jun.
It was a relay sort of thing where they had to bounce golf balls on their golf clubs and walk 5m to a basket, then toss the ball inside the basket. The guy was pretty good at it, but the two women didn't do so well. They got seven balls in the basket in 1 minute. A lot of balls bounced out of the basket, missed the basket, or didn't even make it halfway down the 5m lane. ^^;
And yay, we're back to a VTR. This time it's Sho's turn!
Yes, it's baseball again... But instead of pitching, it's a batting contest. And no, unfortunately, Sho doesn't do very much. :(
It's between Arai Takahiro (Japan's #4 batter - by #4 I mean the fourth batter, supposedly the important one. Why? I'm not very familiar with baseball, but logically, I assume the fourth guy is important because assuming the three others before him managed to make it to third, second and first base each, he's responsible for enabling them to reach home base. Meaning he has to hit the home run. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. ^^ ) and Abe Shinnosuke.
They have three turns to bat, and the pitch is marked with score zones like so:
I think you'll have to click the image to see the larger version. The numbers aren't really clear here...
There are special zones with the coach's face on them. (HAHAH)
Hit the ball into these zones, and the score is 0.
Most of the bets were in Abe's favour, but in the end, Arai won.
(I know, I know... This is a pathetic summary. But it was... Kinda dull. ^^; And Sho-kun didn't do much anyway. *sigh*
Now...
The most nervewracking part of the entire show. The part that had me so nervous watching it that my hands were shaking. Really. I watched this part at like 3AM, January 1, 2008. And I was SO tense (for reasons that snoew and skyura know best)! It was totally a rollercoaster of excitement and dejection for me. XD
PRESSURE BOWLING CONTEST
This is the format: Each team sends out 3 bowlers. Each bowler has only 1 turn. Let's call them bowler A, B and C. The score total is like this: (A+B) x C
E.g. Bowler A hits 5 pins, B hits 5 pins, C hits 6 pins. The score is tallied thus: (5+5) x 6 = 60
Okay? All clear? :D
The order was determined by the total scores so far. Lowest scoring team bowls first, highest scoring team last.
Therefore the order would be: Team Nino, Team Ohno, Team Aiba, Team Sho, Team Jun.
Team Nino
(I got a bit lazy and so didn't bother to note down the names. Heh. ^^; But then I'm sure minna-san is only concerned with the Arashi members. XD )
Nino was first to bowl.
Result:
Reaction:
But his teammates did well.
Final score:
(3+9) x 8 = 96
Next, Team Ohno!
I really must say this... Ohno's team members are humongous in comparison to him.
(The black guy they called "Bob-san" and I would keep thinking about HanaKimi's beach episode with "Bob-channn~" ROFL)
Riida was the second bowler.
Nice pose. hehe
Result:
Oh-chan sugeeeee!
He got nine pins! I'm impressed. :P
Reaction:
Unfortunately, third bowler Bob-san overdid it and his ball shot into the gutter. -__-"
Final score:
(3+9) x 0 = 0
Then it was Team Aiba's turn!
They took off their shoes before bowling. XD Aiba-chan was second bowler as well. (Smart, Arashi. Never take the third one. It's the one with the MOST pressure.)
Start:
Result:
He got 6 pins :)
Reaction:
High fives for teammates! :P
The third bowler was a bit of a let-down because he only hit 3 pins. And the rest of the team wasn't exactly happy with him, as Kokubun pointed out:
Can't really see it there (was tough to take a screencap of such a fleeting moment!), but they were mostly giving him these -__- looks. hahaha
Final score:
(6+6) x 3 = 36
Team Nino was elated at still being in the lead at this point. I was a bundle of nerves for my niiban and ichiban.
Fourth was Team Sho.
The first bowler was quite the petite, kawaii type. In looks and actions. hehe
Sho was second (yes, all but Nino chose to be second). Kokubun inquired when was the last time he bowled.
"About two years ago?"
Oh dear.
Start:
(at least he still remembers how to bowl...)
My heart was beating SO hard when I watched that ball roll down the lane...
Result:
Eight!! Go Sho!
Reaction:
And more reactions (because I can't stand that I have so few Sho screencaps throughout this entire ATF - and besides, his reactions were fun. hehe)
But unfortunately, Team Sho suffered the same fate as Team Ohno when the third bowler got a gutter ball. :(
My heart sank. To the soles of my feet. NOOOOoooooooooooooooooooo, screamed my mind. (I couldn't really scream audibly at the time - not nice to disturb my family at 3-4AM. hahah)
Final Score:
(8+8) x 0 = 0
Lastly, Team Jun.
If I was a mass of nerves when Team Sho began, I was a nervous wreck at this point.
(Did I mention that I don't like the fact that they used the TIME photos to represent Arashi in the scoreboard and all? I'm not very fond of that lot of pics...)
I was incredibly relieved that the first bowler, Ueda Momoko, managed 8 pins.
And then it was MatsuJun's turn. (Imagine elenniel sitting on her chair, knees drawn up to her chin, watching with wide-open eyes and trembling fingers. :P )
"When was the last time you bowled?" asked Kokubun.
"3 years ago."
Kokubun said something about Arashi being "old" or "in the past" or something like that, what with Sho not having bowled for two years and now Jun saying he hadn't bowled in three. ahahaha
Start:
Anou... Team Nino, it's not very nice to wish evil upon your opponents...
(Okay, I'll admit that my gut reaction the first time I saw this was actually: How DARE you try to curse Jun??! heh. A little overreaction ne... )
*looks meaningfully at the ringleader in the bottom left corner of the picture*
When I was taking screencaps, I saw this and just had to save it. He just manages to look cool (with the open jacket) even when bowling. :P (indulge my inner fangirl, okay... XD )
Result:
*relief washes over elenniel in huge waves*
He hit eight! Yay! Eight! =D
Reaction:
When his third bowler stepped up, the tension returned. She would make or break it. She needed at least 6 pins to equal Team Nino and more than that to beat them. Kudos to her for her calm, though. She seemed hardly unnerved by all the pressure. If I were in her position... Well, I'd hate to be in that position. haha
(I think this being MatsuJun's team made me even more nervous for them. =P )
Then this happened:
They win! They win!!
(It was so difficult for me not to jump up and shriek along with them... :P)
Final Score:
(8+8) + 10 = 160
And the final overall tally:
=D
Team Jun wins the 1,000,000 yen prize, and the MVPs are Uehara Kouji (the pitcher from part 1) and Saeki Miki (Team Jun's third bowler).
~~~~~~~~~~
Phew. I'm done. This felt infernally long, with all the s'caps. LJ really needs to overhaul its Insert Image option when it comes to the Scrapbook. It's totally not intuitive. >.<
Hope you've enjoyed this summary! Some feedback would be nice... ^^
And FYI, I'm uploading the split files for this to MU. Will post them soon.) =]
Gah. Only one big LJ-cut instead of separate ones for each segment because it's giving me wayyyy too much trouble at nearly 3 in the morning and I have work tomorrow. >.<
Picking up from where I left off. The last 1 hour of the ATF. :D
I'll just assume you know what's going on already from that other post so I don't need to explain it all over again. hehe
Part 2 dives straight into a swimming contest (I made a pun! XD ) between MatsuJun and Olympic gold medallist, Kitajima Kousuke. There's a very audible "uwah" coming from the other athletes at the mention of Kitajima.
Distance: 50m
MatsuJun explained that because he's just a normal person, he won't achieve anything without some sort of handicap or edge over the Olympic swimmer. So they - Jun & the staff - came up with a "secret plan."
Ta-da! A body suit :P (I like how he looks - from the waist up. The bottom half, especially the flippers, looks funny. hahahah)
First, Jun tries the 50m normally. Ie. with swimming trunks, not the body suit. His time: 50:06 seconds. Kitajima's record is 27:78. Even Jun admits that he "definitely can't do it!"
Then he puts on the suit and gets a little coaching too. (Don't know who the coach is - I forgot to note it down just now. ^^; )
Time improves to 37:58 seconds. I was really shocked. To cut 10 seconds off a race time is no joke. That suit's miraculous. Ah, the wonders of science. He practices more. But can he beat the champion?
Seems to think he can now. hahah
The bets come in, and 24 pick Kitajima, whereas 28 pick Jun. I'm surprised, and Jun's taken aback too. "Wow, there's a lot of faith in me, huh?"
Kokubun picks up a lady on Team Jun - Morimizato Shinobu - and says, "Morimizato-san, you voted for MatsuJun..."
"I believe in him!"
At which point Uchimura interrupts, "I'm sorry - is that a confession??"
XDD
His slightly embarrassed grin is cute. ♥
And Team Nino is singled out because the entire lot of them betted on Kitajima. Nino says something about it, but I didn't manage to catch enough to understand.
Then it's back to the VTR.
Jun's looking pretty darn serious, if you ask me...
And the race begins! (The numbers down in the right corner there are the timers. Blue box is Kitajima's time, and red is Jun's.)
Kitajima-senshi takes the lead first!
I added the black and white arrows here because it's kinda hard to see them. White for Kitajima, black for Jun.
And now I shall let the pictures and timers speak.
KYA~~ MatsuJun wins! 30:41! (The background music bothered me because it sounded so familiar... I couldn't decide it if was Star Trek: Voyager music, Indiana Jones music or Superman music. It sounded most like Superman music, but I'm not sure. hahah)
Kitajima finished 2 seconds after he did with a time of about 32 seconds.
Jun, I'm proud of you! (Even though I felt it was a tad unfair that Kitajima was using the breaststroke and you were using the faster freestyle... But he's an Olympic swimmer, so whatever. haha)
Jun can hardly believe it.
And Kitajima's a good sport.
Jun declares it's "cho kimochiii!"
(And I had to laugh at that after reading Kitajima's wikipedia article because apparently that's a phrase he popularised. LOL)
Kokubun asked Morimizato what she thinks now. She said, "Kakkoii desu!" XD
The next segment turns out to be more like a series of mini contests in the studio.
I. Apple-crushing, featuring Chie Honman from Team Ohno, who's apparently Korean.
He's a giant.
He makes his translator (that lady in black) look sooo tiny. Heck, he makes Kokubun look tiny too. (Okay. Let's stop and think for a moment: Chie-san is on Team Ohno...)
The challenge was to see how many apples he could crush in one hand in a minute. The teams had to bet on whether he could crush 10 or more, or less than 10 apples.
See Keio-boy thinking about it. hehe
And when Chie-san crushes apples... He crushes them.
o_O
II. Rope-climbing, featuring Yoshida Saori, a women's wrestler from Team Sho.
But first! Kokubun invites Arashi to try climbing 5m up a rope. Nino happily volunteers Riida for the job.
Much to Riida's dismay.
He does his best anyway.
Albeit in a rather odd manner...
He almost reached the 5m mark, but couldn't go farther and had to let go and fall back onto the mattress. He got up and exhaustedly stumbled off - presumably in the direction of home, because he waved as he staggered away. :P
But nah, of course he didn't go home. XD
Yoshida-san's challenge was to climb the 5m in 10 seconds or less (the bets were the same as for Chie-san's apple-crushing: 10 or more, or less than 10?) She made it in 10 seconds. Sugoi.
I like this shot from above when she was climbing up the rope. :P
III. Golf ball-lifting (for lack of a better name...), featuring three golfers from Team Jun.
It was a relay sort of thing where they had to bounce golf balls on their golf clubs and walk 5m to a basket, then toss the ball inside the basket. The guy was pretty good at it, but the two women didn't do so well. They got seven balls in the basket in 1 minute. A lot of balls bounced out of the basket, missed the basket, or didn't even make it halfway down the 5m lane. ^^;
And yay, we're back to a VTR. This time it's Sho's turn!
Yes, it's baseball again... But instead of pitching, it's a batting contest. And no, unfortunately, Sho doesn't do very much. :(
It's between Arai Takahiro (Japan's #4 batter - by #4 I mean the fourth batter, supposedly the important one. Why? I'm not very familiar with baseball, but logically, I assume the fourth guy is important because assuming the three others before him managed to make it to third, second and first base each, he's responsible for enabling them to reach home base. Meaning he has to hit the home run. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. ^^ ) and Abe Shinnosuke.
They have three turns to bat, and the pitch is marked with score zones like so:
I think you'll have to click the image to see the larger version. The numbers aren't really clear here...
There are special zones with the coach's face on them. (HAHAH)
Hit the ball into these zones, and the score is 0.
Most of the bets were in Abe's favour, but in the end, Arai won.
(I know, I know... This is a pathetic summary. But it was... Kinda dull. ^^; And Sho-kun didn't do much anyway. *sigh*
Now...
The most nervewracking part of the entire show. The part that had me so nervous watching it that my hands were shaking. Really. I watched this part at like 3AM, January 1, 2008. And I was SO tense (for reasons that snoew and skyura know best)! It was totally a rollercoaster of excitement and dejection for me. XD
PRESSURE BOWLING CONTEST
This is the format: Each team sends out 3 bowlers. Each bowler has only 1 turn. Let's call them bowler A, B and C. The score total is like this: (A+B) x C
E.g. Bowler A hits 5 pins, B hits 5 pins, C hits 6 pins. The score is tallied thus: (5+5) x 6 = 60
Okay? All clear? :D
The order was determined by the total scores so far. Lowest scoring team bowls first, highest scoring team last.
Therefore the order would be: Team Nino, Team Ohno, Team Aiba, Team Sho, Team Jun.
Team Nino
(I got a bit lazy and so didn't bother to note down the names. Heh. ^^; But then I'm sure minna-san is only concerned with the Arashi members. XD )
Nino was first to bowl.
Result:
Reaction:
But his teammates did well.
Final score:
(3+9) x 8 = 96
Next, Team Ohno!
I really must say this... Ohno's team members are humongous in comparison to him.
(The black guy they called "Bob-san" and I would keep thinking about HanaKimi's beach episode with "Bob-channn~" ROFL)
Riida was the second bowler.
Nice pose. hehe
Result:
Oh-chan sugeeeee!
He got nine pins! I'm impressed. :P
Reaction:
Unfortunately, third bowler Bob-san overdid it and his ball shot into the gutter. -__-"
Final score:
(3+9) x 0 = 0
Then it was Team Aiba's turn!
They took off their shoes before bowling. XD Aiba-chan was second bowler as well. (Smart, Arashi. Never take the third one. It's the one with the MOST pressure.)
Start:
Result:
He got 6 pins :)
Reaction:
High fives for teammates! :P
The third bowler was a bit of a let-down because he only hit 3 pins. And the rest of the team wasn't exactly happy with him, as Kokubun pointed out:
Can't really see it there (was tough to take a screencap of such a fleeting moment!), but they were mostly giving him these -__- looks. hahaha
Final score:
(6+6) x 3 = 36
Team Nino was elated at still being in the lead at this point. I was a bundle of nerves for my niiban and ichiban.
Fourth was Team Sho.
The first bowler was quite the petite, kawaii type. In looks and actions. hehe
Sho was second (yes, all but Nino chose to be second). Kokubun inquired when was the last time he bowled.
"About two years ago?"
Oh dear.
Start:
(at least he still remembers how to bowl...)
My heart was beating SO hard when I watched that ball roll down the lane...
Result:
Eight!! Go Sho!
Reaction:
And more reactions (because I can't stand that I have so few Sho screencaps throughout this entire ATF - and besides, his reactions were fun. hehe)
But unfortunately, Team Sho suffered the same fate as Team Ohno when the third bowler got a gutter ball. :(
My heart sank. To the soles of my feet. NOOOOoooooooooooooooooooo, screamed my mind. (I couldn't really scream audibly at the time - not nice to disturb my family at 3-4AM. hahah)
Final Score:
(8+8) x 0 = 0
Lastly, Team Jun.
If I was a mass of nerves when Team Sho began, I was a nervous wreck at this point.
(Did I mention that I don't like the fact that they used the TIME photos to represent Arashi in the scoreboard and all? I'm not very fond of that lot of pics...)
I was incredibly relieved that the first bowler, Ueda Momoko, managed 8 pins.
And then it was MatsuJun's turn. (Imagine elenniel sitting on her chair, knees drawn up to her chin, watching with wide-open eyes and trembling fingers. :P )
"When was the last time you bowled?" asked Kokubun.
"3 years ago."
Kokubun said something about Arashi being "old" or "in the past" or something like that, what with Sho not having bowled for two years and now Jun saying he hadn't bowled in three. ahahaha
Start:
Anou... Team Nino, it's not very nice to wish evil upon your opponents...
(Okay, I'll admit that my gut reaction the first time I saw this was actually: How DARE you try to curse Jun??! heh. A little overreaction ne... )
*looks meaningfully at the ringleader in the bottom left corner of the picture*
When I was taking screencaps, I saw this and just had to save it. He just manages to look cool (with the open jacket) even when bowling. :P (indulge my inner fangirl, okay... XD )
Result:
*relief washes over elenniel in huge waves*
He hit eight! Yay! Eight! =D
Reaction:
When his third bowler stepped up, the tension returned. She would make or break it. She needed at least 6 pins to equal Team Nino and more than that to beat them. Kudos to her for her calm, though. She seemed hardly unnerved by all the pressure. If I were in her position... Well, I'd hate to be in that position. haha
(I think this being MatsuJun's team made me even more nervous for them. =P )
Then this happened:
They win! They win!!
(It was so difficult for me not to jump up and shriek along with them... :P)
Final Score:
(8+8) + 10 = 160
And the final overall tally:
=D
Team Jun wins the 1,000,000 yen prize, and the MVPs are Uehara Kouji (the pitcher from part 1) and Saeki Miki (Team Jun's third bowler).
~~~~~~~~~~
Phew. I'm done. This felt infernally long, with all the s'caps. LJ really needs to overhaul its Insert Image option when it comes to the Scrapbook. It's totally not intuitive. >.<
Hope you've enjoyed this summary! Some feedback would be nice... ^^
And FYI, I'm uploading the split files for this to MU. Will post them soon.) =]
