Airsoft is considered to be an extreme sport, where players shoot replica firearms at each other. Think paintball, sans the unrealistic paintball guns and space suits. It started in the late 1970s, when gun nuts in Japan were pissed off since they couldn’t own real guns due to their strict post-WWII anti-firearm laws. In fact, they got so pissed off they made replicas of the real thing to satisfy their gun-loving passion. Those gun nuts were happy for a time, but after a period of just staring at their replicas they must have thought, "Hey, why don’t we make these guns shoot plastic pellets?" Then the gun nuts started shooting each other with their replicas, and airsoft was born.
Here in the Philippines, the airsoft community is steadily growing. Perhaps this is due to the fact that in the past, only the upper class could afford to own an AEG (Automatic Electric Gun). Now, one can purchase copies of the AEGs made by Japanese airsoft companies like Tokyo Marui. These copies of airsoft guns, constructed in a certain communist land of persons with unusual pirating ability, used to be of terribly poor quality. However, recent products have proven to be on par with the original Japanese manufacturers. Those Chinese must have really disciplined their quality-control officers well. A certain China-made AEG copy of an original Japanese airsoft gun costs only P4,000 as compared to P12,000, and performs just as well, if not better. Our airsoft community is mostly populated by guys aged 20 to 30, with a small contingent of females out for blood.
Airsoft revolves around a system of honesty and honor. Unlike paintball, which leaves a mark (although devious paintballers may sometimes wipe off their paint stains and continue playing), sometimes there is no true way to tell if someone’s been hit or not. This means that, whenever you’re hit, you shout out "Hit!" at the top of your lungs, raise your gun up high over your head to show your defeat, and walk off to the safe area. The scenario possibilities are limitless, from plain vanilla skirmishes to respawns, medics, downed pilots, defend the hill, and countless others. Sometimes, there arises a notorious breed of player that the airsoft community classifies as a "zombie." These zombies just don’t want to die. You can shoot them over and over again, but if a marshal (airsoft referee) doesn’t see it, they won’t call hits. I hate ‘em. We all do. These despicable, rotten dregs of the airsoft community have no sense of fair play and honor, and are unworthy of the right to be called airsofters. Entire teams are known to have this unsavory characteristic; they would be better off if they disbanded and devoted the rest of their lives to bullying small children.
While playing airsoft, safety precautions must be observed, especially when facing particularly rubbery opponents who simply refuse to acknowledge their demise. You don’t want to get shot in the eye by a burst of plastic pellets, so you absolutely must wear adequate eye protection. You also don’t want to get shot, period, so you wear camouflage to disguise yourself from those who wish to remove you from the round by means of shooting the crap out of you. A BB, as these plastic pellets are commonly called, can actually hurt depending on the power of the gun it’s fired from. The pain can be as weak as me flicking you in the forehead with my finger, or in extreme cases of highly upgraded guns, can result in a BB imbedded in soft areas of the body, such as the nose, the forehead, or the ear. Cases like these are very rare, but like the renegade motocross biker who seeks to viciously bump into opponents with the intent of causing them to fall headlong into a ravine, every now and then you get a bad apple whose only purpose in life is to cause enemy airsofters as much pain as possible. I’m paranoid about getting shot by one of those nasty individuals, so in addition to the standard facemask and BDU (Battle Dress Uniform) I wear a helmet (no painful skull shots), and a rubber vest (no excruciating nipple shots). Most of the airsofters I’ve seen go without those two items. It’s a personal choice whether to wear them or not.
There are many different airsoft sites in the Philippines, but I’ve only personally been to one: Camp Masada, home of Team Apocalypse. (Fun fact: Apocalypse has more female members than any other airsoft team.) A four-hectare jungle site where the foliage is thick and the mosquitoes have a penchant for pinpointing any exposed skin areas (when fully equipped for airsoft, my only exposed skin areas are my fingers, which poke out of my half-finger gloves; they still get bitten), playing in this site is a fantastic cardio workout. It’s got a huge hill that is positively lined with bunkers. Visibility is pretty low, since the plants grow everywhere. It’s also pretty impossible to locate the snipers once they’ve got a good position; sometimes what appears to be a bush swaying in the wind is actually a short guy in a Ghillie suit aiming his sniper rifle at your face. By then, of course, it is too late.