While Japan looks forward to hosting the world's biggest and glitziest sports event five years from now, a Tokyo man is promoting a series of innovative, quirky sports that are played simply for the fun of it.
Handball played with slippery, lotion-dabbed hands; a game of Frisbee involving both people and their dogs; and a squash video game in which the elderly can use their tongues to control the racket are among the sporting twists being touted by 34-year-old Tomohiro Sawada and his World Yuru Sports Association.
"I wanted to restore what sports meant originally, things like 'playing,' 'fun' and 'pastime' " by inventing original games that let players focus on the sheer joy of participating, said Sawada, a copywriter for advertising giant Dentsu Inc.