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[Mar. 15th, 2008|08:58 pm]
Scott
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| [ | Tags | | | japan, travel | ] |
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| | 01011001 - Age of Shadows | ] |
Harvey keeps calling me a prude, so to prove him wrong today I went to Honen Matsuri, aka the Giant Penis Festival.
The Giant Penis Festival takes place in the town of Komaki, about an hour by train from Nagoya. Lots of Japanese towns have fertility festivals for the beginning of spring, but the people of Komaki take "fertility" more literally than most. Priests at the town's two Shinto shrines carve wooden penises of various sizes, and then the town's leading citizens carry them around in a parade for a while. After the parade, everyone celebrates and eats penis-shaped snacks.
The Shinmeisha shrine, where the procession began.
A guy dressed as a demon, followed by a penis flag.
Every event in Japan has to have at least three guys in traditional costumes carrying flags. It's some kind of law or something.
A man carrying a wooden penis.
A woman carrying a bigger wooden penis.
The focus of the procession was this several-meter long wooden penis. It took about ten or fifteen people to carry it. They all looked like they were having fun, and shouted "Rasshai!" every few meters.
Okay, look at this picture closely and be enlightened. This is a man wearing some funny-looking ceremonial garment and walking in a penis-themed parade. And he is not only wearing a suit and tie, but an absolutely immaculate suit and tie, with more dignity than I could muster if my life depended on it. THAT is all you need to know to understand the Japanese culture.
An old man selling traditional sculptures.
There were a lot of foreigners at the festival; more than I've ever seen in one place in Japan before. I guess this was more exciting for them than for the Japanese, who are mostly used to this sort of thing by now. Luckily, English was okey.
Chocolate snacks. It was this, hot dogs, or squid-on-a-stick. I opted for the hot dog.
(Random TMI fact - I had never known penises normally looked like that, as I'd never seen an uncircumcised one before.)
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