... or Don't Stop Conceiving
Reader be warned, this blog post is nothing short of vastly inappropriate and certainly worthy of an R rating, if not NC17. However, this is also going to be the most picture packed, action soaked, and difficult-to-take-in-one-sitting of my blog posts so far. By the end of this you are most definitely going to feel like butter spread over too much bread (and the picture below is not mine). Having said that, let's jump right into todays blog post... THE PENIS FESTIVAL!!!
Okay, so it's not actually called the Penis Festival (at least by Japanese folks), but by the end of this post I think you will likely be convinced that it could not be anything but a Penis Festival. The official name of the festival is the Hounen Matsuri (Matsuri meaning Festival), and it is a fertility festival held every year in a part of Japan about two hours away from Osaka called Nagoya, at a shrine called Tagata Jinja. All of this nonsense began when Erick...
... Kansai Gaidai's resident gangsta of Noh fame, mentioned that he had bought relatively cheap bus tickets to go to Nagoya on a school day and get all caught up in the Masculine beauty that is the Penis Festival. I also got caught up in Erick's enthusiasm (and enjoyed the idea of skipping a day of school), and on the spot went online, bought tickets, and started preparing myself mentally for the impending glory of what we were about to set out to do (and I recruited Tony to go as well). On the morning of I woke at way-too-early O'clock and jumped on the train to Osaka with Tony and Erick, then hopped the bus to Nagoya at around 7:30. The bus ride was about two hours, but it was more than tolerable because the Willer Express had a beautiful screen in every seat featuring...
... THREE PAGES OF THE BEST SEGA GAMES AROUND. Needless to say a fun time was had by all. After going about an hour we stopped at your standard sprawling gas/rest station complex and I found and fell in love with perhaps the tastiest thing I've ever had in my life. It is called Kurobutaman...
... and it is heaven in a sticky bun...
... and is filled with pork (and lots of fat) and topped with Wasabi Mustard. We hadn't even gotten to Nagoya yet, and I was having the time of my life. After about an hour of train travel following our rockin' (by which I mean tranquil) bus ride, we finally arrived at Tagata Jinja, and immediately purchased an enormous hot dog cut into the shape of a penis (photo courtesy Tony)...
... and then proceeded to revert to our teenage years as we helped ourselves to some phallic chocolate covered bananas (also courtesy Tony)...
... needless to say we were not acting our age that particular day. In fact, this festival seemed to have a magical ability to revert everyone there to their days of youth and complete and utter immaturity. It would seem that the Elixir of Youth is most easily attained by having male genitalia all over the place. There was also plenty of not-phallic food available, such as squid on a stick...
... and just about the most delicious looking Okonomiyaki ever...
The Temple itself was gorgeous, if packed...
... and while there was plenty of beautiful religious imagery...
... and some gorgeous statues...
... とか...
... there was also a lot of penis stone work... everywhere...
... I mean everywhere...
... even the little pillars...
... even the bell on the shrine...
Needless to say this was one of the most blatant displays of something taboo in Japan that I had ever seen in my life. I was frankly shocked, and I was more shocked that by and large my Japanese friends had never heard of this festival in the first place. One of my favorite places in the temple was easily a little shrine where you slip a coin into a little slot and then rub two large, marble balls of stone for luck (cheers, Tony)...
Awesome. Now, because I get the feeling I'm jading your esteemed opinion of this festival, there were other cultural things going on at the same time. For instance, in a little ring towards the center of the complex the temple was putting on several performances, such as hula dancing...
... not that I see how hula dancing has anything to do with Japan or Penis's, but anyway... they also had Samurai...
... going agro on some tatami mats...
A bad day for tatami mats everywhere (the samurai's natural enemy, I've heard it said). The main event of the entire day (aside from buying loads of useless trinkets and a wide variety of phallic objects) was an enormous parade (below are some trinkets...)
The parade starts at the sister shrine to Tagata Jinja, and the main point is for the young men of the town to carry a massive wooden Penis float by hand from one shrine to the other. Needless to say it was fantastic. Here we have the Penis Bearers heading off to the other shrine to pick up the massive piece of wood (get it?).
They look pumped. Wanting to get involved, I walked with Tony and Erick to the other shrine and tried to find a good vantage point. Here is the entrance of the other shrine...
... along with Tony and Erick. The Penis Float, along with the other things to be carried in the procession, all started out in a purification square (shown below)...
... and here's the square after the procession had left...
Reader be warned, this blog post is nothing short of vastly inappropriate and certainly worthy of an R rating, if not NC17. However, this is also going to be the most picture packed, action soaked, and difficult-to-take-in-one-sitting of my blog posts so far. By the end of this you are most definitely going to feel like butter spread over too much bread (and the picture below is not mine). Having said that, let's jump right into todays blog post... THE PENIS FESTIVAL!!!
... and just about the most delicious looking Okonomiyaki ever...
The Temple itself was gorgeous, if packed...
The parade starts at the sister shrine to Tagata Jinja, and the main point is for the young men of the town to carry a massive wooden Penis float by hand from one shrine to the other. Needless to say it was fantastic. Here we have the Penis Bearers heading off to the other shrine to pick up the massive piece of wood (get it?).
The procession proper began with an Obousan (Priest) blessing the ground in front of him with salt (one of the basic elements that in Shinto is thought to be purifying, such as white paper and Pine trees)...
... and here he is blessing people by pouring salt into their hands...
Next came a couple of older gentlemen carrying large sticks with rings on the top...
Followed closely by a man dressed in red with what I can only assume was a (Gaijin?) demon mask on...
... standing on some serious stilts...
... and generally looking awesome. Next came a couple of carriages also carried on the shoulders of some hefty men and being dragged by further old gentlemen...
... and...
... and our mystery rider is...
... a creepy doll person. Next in the procession came a series of older gentlemen carrying a white-paper-bedazzled tree...
... and the Ark of the Covenant...
... followed by a procession of musicians...
... including a very talented flute playin' priestess...
... and a big ol' pot belly drum...
Next came what I can only call the most frustrating thing conceivable to try to get a decent picture of (I tried very hard)... an enormous Penis Flag (now is the time to truly avert your eyes/wait for the next post)...
Phenomenal. Next came what I believe is called the Overflowing Sake Fountain, or something like that, but in reality it amounted to getting served free booze as you watched enormous phallic symbols get lugged past you. Needless to say I partook a bit (I only had four cups overall)...
... and here is the well from whence it sprang...
I love the light in that one. They were also passing out various dried foods, including dried octopus and dried seaweed...
... I wasn't as into that, for whatever reason. Next came various enormous pine trees covered with ribbons, which I will discuss further in a bit...
... and finally came the main event, the big bad beautiful, the reason everyone was there in the first place... THE PENIS FLOAT.
Splendorous. And for the faint of heart... here it is from several different angles!
... go on...
... tell me more...
... that one is my favorite...
... oh, it went through the Tori. The last thing in the procession worth mentioning is a group of lucky, lucky girls in green from the village who get to walk the entire procession holding baby-sized wooden wangs... as if they were holding babies...
... and if that wasn't enough...
For the curious, it's supposedly very good luck to give that little guy a pat on the head, so I went ahead and did that immediately after taking these pictures. After the procession finally finished, and once everyone had made it to the temple, the priests proceeded to tear up the be-ribboned pine tree and the crowd started scrambling for the ribbon branches like mad, hoping to get some of that good luck. For the curious, I managed to get a couple of ribbons myself. The final event of the day was easily one of the more exciting bits, although the implications behind its origins are still a little troubling to me. On the second balcony of the temple they had several barrels of pre-made rice cakes in waiting, donated from local companies...
.... and the people standing on these balconies proceeded to throw the rice cakes into the crowd, another of the luckier things to get during the penis festival...
... but what they didn't tell us is that these things were as hard as rock, and there were people in the crowd willing to push you into the next region of Japan as they scrambled for rice cakes that hit the floor. Overall very unsafe. However, fairly early on in the procedure I managed to reach out like a complete and utter bad-ass and pluck one of the cakes clear out of the sky, one-handed. Needless to say I felt like Neo, except intelligent.
Looks just like an arepa, doesn't it? The only reason I found the event questionable was that it sort of implied a tradition of rich people throwing rice cakes at the poor masses once a year so they can feel benevolent. I'm sure that's just my conjecture, though. Anyhoo, that more or less wraps up my little adventure in Nagoya, and it was easily the coolest thing I may ever go to in my life. And this is where I leave you, red in the cheeks and eager to purchase your plane ticket for next year's festival, with a brief integer of time in which Zen may or may not exist...
I believe they call that Kentucky Fried Hot Damn. Tune in next time for Fushimi Inari... and food, more likely than not.
ご親切にありがとうございます、
Alex -..-
