A couple years ago, me and my college organization, Japanese Culture Club, were looking for a way to promote group unity and also show our pride and involvement in the group we were a part of. What could we do that would be affordable, fun, and memorable?
What we decided on was meeting up with the Chinese and Korean cultural groups and having a big contest to see which club was the best, even though, of course, it was all in fun and not really supposed to be an intense competition! We decided on several games it would make sense to play, including water balloon passing, trivia on the different native countries, and suikawari, which is a Japanese game where contestants blindfold themselves and try to smash a watermelon that has been placed somewhere in front of them, while friends try and vocally direct them.
We also thought that a fun way to get everyone involved would be to have rivalry tees with our different groups represented. Getting graphic sports tees was a really good move because it got everyone excited to participate, and it was fun, if confusing, to try to explain to other college students in our classes what was going on, and why we were wearing those tshirts. Our graphic sports tees were blue, and the other teams had yellow and red, so it looked cool when we all got together. We used lightweight tees that were not too tight since we had a range of body sizes and it was also nearly summer, so something heavy would not do for everyday wear!
The day of the competition was so much fun, and I even was able to smash a watermelon, even though I sort of sneaked a peak under the blindfold by accident. Some of my friends had put paint in their water balloons before throwing them, which was not a good idea, but luckily their graphic sports tees washed out okay.
Even though it has been a few years now, most of us still have our graphic sports tees to remember the moment, and every time I wear it, I smile, remembering a warm spring day when my friends and others tried to answer trivia and threw water balloons at each other.
