Sunday, April 13, 2008

Catchup post 12: Kanamara Matsuri (Phallus Festival), April 6

This was an interesting event. Every year in Kawasaki, south of Tokyo, north of Yokohama. Every year this shrine takes the three giant penis sculptures on a parade around the area. It was an interesting event that was incredibly crowded.

Here they are in their home.

They sold many things there, but only if you could reach the booths. It was very very crowded.
There were also a lot of crossdressers.

Most of the crossdressers carried the giant pink penis.

It was a really fun environment.

No one was very shy there, everyone took pictures with everyone, and people were friendly.

And some people were a little bit odd, but that's to be expected.

And they're turning around!

I nearly got run over probably 100 times in a few hours. These barges were bigger than they  look. One of the penis sculptures was made of wood, and one of steel. Apparently, the story goes that there was a woman who had a demon in her vagina, and it kept biting the penis' of her husbands off, so the blacksmith forged a steel penis to break it's teeth and draw it out. I don't know what the wooden one was for, that part of the story wasn't explained to me.
 
I saw this neat little temple on the parade route, no one I asked knew what the temple was. Everyone was a tourist, and no one was paying attention to the area.

Sometimes the English doesn't make any sense. It's usually very amusing.

Well, the penis lollipops were delicious. I wasn't the only person who took a photo, by far.

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