Tuesday, April 6

Kanamara Matsuri

DISCLAIMER: I'm sorry mom, I'm sorry grandma, if you read this post and it offends your sensibilities, just remember I didn't make up the event itself OR any of the slang used to describe it. And as for "loving the cock" and all that... let's just say a healthy dose of realism never hurt anyone. If you hadn't, erm, "been young once," I wouldn't be here at all. Is that really so perverse? 'Nuff said.


"Ladies" of the night



Sunday, seven of us got up early and headed out to Kawasaki in the drizzle for the yearly Kawasaki Kanamara Matsuri, the Festival of the Steel Phallus. I'll explain a little first, but really the PICTURES (linked to gallery) can speak for me. We trained from JR Shinagawa to Kawasaki Daishi with one change along the line. The shrine was really close to the station and easy to find, as a steady stream of people were heading for it when we got there. The festival was slated to begin at 11AM, and I thought that meant they'd be taking the Mikoshi (portable shrines) out at 11 but found out pretty shortly that what began at 11 were the traditional Shinto rituals concerning purification and that the procession was, in fact, very last.

That's not to say there was nothing to do. We quickly found all sorts of penis-shaped goodies to amuse us. As we were among the first of the big crowds to arrive, we broke the ice with the shrine staff and tourists by climbing all over the peter-totters (I guess they weren't really teeter-totters but whatever) and buying a stash of cock shaped sweets. It's lucky we hit the candy booth early because when we went back to buy more later, they were entirely sold out.

There was already a pretty big crowd around the three Mikoshi (portable shrines) when we got over there but not nearly as large a crowd as came later. Each of the three shrines represented some different facet of the festival and was donated by/ carried by a different group. As best I gathered, the mikoshi featuring a mid-sized black cock in a boat was given by some company and I'm not sure what it represented. (Overseas diplomacy? Hee. The NAACP would probably protest its size...) The giant, pink penis was carried by a group of cross-dressers from a local club who spent the whole time preening and passing out fliers in case any new men might want to join them in their hobby. I believe the pink shrine had sort of a gender/sexuality activist theme to it. The smallest but most important shrine was carried last and contained a squat, thick wooden phallus that is the symbol of the original diety enshrined at Kanamara Jinja. This was the shrine blessed first by the high priestess during the opening ceremony and the one that see-sawed crazily all over the road at certain intervals. I still have some bruises on my shoulder from when I carried it for a few minutes.

Only a minute or so after we started taking pictures of the huge, pink shrine, Rachel looked up and said to someone I couldn't see, "Holy shit, you're Dave Attel!... I love your show!" At which point I thought to myself, "Who is Dave Attel? Not one of those obnoxious English teaching Gaijin celebrities, is he?" Then someone either mentioned it or it simply occurred to me when I looked at him that he is, in fact, the host of the Comedy Central show Insomniac, a program that features late-night and often drunken travelogue comedy. Truth be told, I hate Insomniac and I hate Dave Attel but even though I thought "oh, it's THAT asshat," I said, "Nice to meet you!" and puckered up for the camera like the sellout I am.

Needless to say, I never imagined I'd get my "15 minutes of fame" at a Japanese schlong festival (of all places!?!?). I think that we seven (especially Rachel, Erin and I) will have a few minutes in the one-hour episode when it airs in July or September. We were interviewed, photographed, waivered and then cameod all over the place after signing the form. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing we were carrying around that candy... I can think of a few instances where I'm mighty sure the camera caught me in some, uh, compromising situations. But then again, that was the whole theme of the day, eh?

After we played with the TV crew for a bit and peeked in on the rather secretive opening ceremony of the Sacred Flame, we all paid our respects to the shrine diety in return for the genetalia themed request of our choice (fertility, wedded bliss, STD safety, whatever). The High Priestess blessed the mikoshi, the miko danced (aren't they a wee bit young for this??!?) and everyone got ready to take part in the procession.

Colin, Chris and Rachel in particular helped carry the "wooden phallus" mikoshi. Of all the ironies, there were three Navy guys also on standby to hoist the shrine who, despite the credit I give them for even BEING THERE, made an embarrasing number of extremely loud and lewd comments. I mean, obviously some wisecracks are necessary at a festival like that... but those guys were overkill.

Then, at the beat of a drum, we were off into the streets, joined by several hundred revelers, for the better part of an hour. At some point the TV crew drifted away, off into other parts of Tokyo and I never got to ask Dave Attel for his autograph. Oh well, there's the photographic evidence anyway. After that, the rains set in and it got dark and quite cold. For themes such as that, I daresay warm and wet might work well but cold and wet was a bit unsavory... so we all went home. The festival, in entirety, lasted from about 11AM to 3PM. Not bad for a 400 yen daytrip from Shinjuku!

I apologize for the unattractive and ungainly setup of my new Gallery. I'm working on getting it so that it doesn't look generic, green and gross. It seems to function well enough, though! The good news is that by this weekend I'll easily have all the Spring Break photos labled and ready to go in their own albums. In fact, they're already there but you just can't see yet. MUAHAHA.

Now then, I wonder what sort of strange Google hits this post will get me...