Naked Men anyone??

Ohhh baby! Oh baby!! Yes, that's right, this last weekend was The Naked Man Festival aka the Hadaka Matsuri. Its celebrated in only about 2 temples in the whole country, so we ended up traveling 2.5 hours to get 2 prefectures west (and south?) of us to Okoyama. The night was very interesting, full of fun times and then not so fun times.

First, we met up with everyone, checked into the hotel, and headed toward the izakaya (japanese traditional restaurant/pub). We had some good food, good conversation and beer and then were ready to get on the buses and head for the temple. Loads of other JETs were there from all over the country (well the nearby prefectures at least!) and so we saw a lot of new faces. We were forced to separate from our men as they had to go ahead to don their fundoshis for the festival. A fundoshi is a long white piece of cloth that is twisted and made into a loincloth/male thong. The guys all have to get help putting them on, so there were 2 ancient men doing it for 1,000 yen a person (about 9 dollars). Im told that the old men pull the back part (the thong part) up so tight that if you dont have everything in the right spot, well..... lets just say very bad things could happen!

So all of us women stood outside the tents and waited for our men to emerge in their full glory. One thing that must be mentioned: it got down to 0 degrees C that night! It was freezing for those of us just standing around, so I cant even imagine how cold it was for the men! They only had the fundoshi, and their tabi, which are these really thin white socks. After they came out, we snapped lots of pictures (possibly excellent blackmail material in the future!) and gave them alcohol for warmth of course, :)

Then they all went off screaming "Washoi! Washoi!" at the top of their lungs. we were able to watch the whole ceremony from the spectators area but when we tried to take pictures, it was so dark that the pictures were either black or blurry... sorry about that! The men then had to run together through an ice-water pond, touch the sacred statue, go to a temple and pray, run to the main temple to shout and then repeat the process 3 times. Well, after the first ice water experience, our boys decided that was enough and went to take their places on the platform. This whole thing from start to finish is from 9pm to about 2am. I think our boys got on the platform at around 11pm. Inside the temple there are priests blessing bundles of sticks. Some are for fertility (I made Adam swear he wasnt going to catch one of those!) and the others are for a cash prize of a few thousand dollars. As the time goes on, more and more men gather and squish and press onto the platform. At the end a few thousand individual men are turned into one big liquid mass of humanity. At the stroke of midnight the lights go out and the sticks are thrown. At this time its a free-for-all for the sacred sticks -- absolutely no rules! Not surprisingly a few men die every year and many are injured. There are medics standing by, and when someone is hurt they have to go in en masse. Just one medic going in wouldnt work. Hed be overtaken by the crowd in an instant. So, dozens of them hold hands and carry sticks and weave their way through to the injured person. Lifting him up over the crowd, they carry him out to the applause of everyone!

Like I said before, our men had taken their positions early on the platform. Adam and Vinh were partners (looking out for each other. Adam was pressed up against the wall in the back holding on for dear life, but since Vinh was right behind him and, therefore, not holding onto the wall, he kept getting swept away with the crowd and Adam had to attempt to hold onto him. The dangerous part isnt only the sheer numbers of people, but also because theyre all on a raised stone platform, edged with about 10 steep stone steps. As the liquid humanity flows from side to side 30-30 people topple over the edge of the stairs onto the people below. People have also been known to pass out from lack of oxygen (not being able to breathe). Adam was lucky enough to be able to put his arms against the wall and push out slightly to breathe. Others werent so lucky.

Anyway, at the end of the night, none of our men were seriously injured. Bruised, battered, sweaty and stinky of course, but nothing bad. There was also an after party at a club, but most of us were so exhausted we just wanted to crawl into a warm bed and sleep for a few hours, so we got some curry at a 24 hour place and took a taxi back!

The next day we stopped at Costco on our way back home! And that was our weekend! Pretty memorable, thats for sure! Will post some pictures... some are kinda naughty, beware! haha!