Gimme some slack....line

Hey ho!

On Saturday I volunteered at the Gibbon Slackline Global City Balance Challenge! This was an event running alongside the 8th Nippon Open Slacklines Championship.

Tokyo was taking part in a global competition to beat the world record of number of people to balance on a slackline for 10 seconds (individually over the course of a day, not all-together at the same time!). Unfortunately, as most of the people who gave it a go were small children with no interest in the challenge, but excited by the prospect of climbing all over the slackline like something from a jungle-gym, and also, because we were really unfortunate with the weather (facing an oncoming typhoon), we didn't quite reach the 800-people target we had aimed for. Instead, we got somewhere between 500 and 600 people, which was still pretty respectable, especially when compared to some of the other scores.

Although waking up very early on a Saturday and spending all day out in the rain gave me a horrible cold - leading me to spend the next two days in bed, I would still say it was totally worth it! I learnt how to slackline! (if only for 10 seconds), and spent the whole day teaching others to do the same. Also, I practiced speaking Japanese all-day, and spoke to dozens of different people. I could understand the group meetings, the instructions for setting up in the morning and packing up in the evening. It was one of the very few experiences I've had here of working alongside people my own age, and I truly felt like one of the team. No one was patronizing me or constantly trying to translate for me, I was given an equal workload and was treated with equal expectations. It was wonderful, and I felt I was able to rise to the occasion and challenge myself because of this. I also got to take home an awesome T-shirt, so now I have something to remember the experience by!

Matt was helping volunteer too, he was asked to translate for the Brazilian slacklining champion Pedro, who ultimately won the competition. With an abundance of confidence, Pedro didn't really need much help, so Matt ended up working at the balance challenge too.

The team

I always thought Slacklining was a lame hipster sport, but now that I've taken part in this event I realize its a really wonderful form of exercise. It takes so much focus, balance and discipline. It is definitely something that is much harder than it looks, and is very addictive! I seriously have a lot of respect for those that can make it look easy. Standing on a slackline for a few seconds is very difficult and many failed in attempting to do so. I am really impressed by those that can take this sport to the next step and do complicated gymnastics routines whilst balanced on a slackline.

The finals competition can be seen here. This is a 6 hour video, so you might want to skip to the "good parts":

My friend Chris who works for Life Style Inc., a 360 video company was filming the event - I will try to track down what he filmed...I'm sure it will be worth watching. Hopefully I may feature in it!!