Japanese fighting walls

OK...we admit we don't know an awful lot about what is going on here because these videos are in Japanese.

What we think is happening is that people (engineering students?) are competing to create the strongest timber wall made with traditional carpentry joints. The walls are made to "fight" each other in pairs by putting a hydraulic jack between them that pulls them together (like tug of war in reverse).

The first video shows the construction of the walls and the second video shows the walls in action (perhaps the best video of the three). The third video shows the final stages of the competition.

The forces must be huge to cause these walls to break ...but you could stage your own miniature competition by making walls out of wooden lolly sticks or coffee stirrers.