My sincerest apologies for the huge build up and subsequent long wait for this next blog entry. I no doubt left you with high expectations; I hope I may live up to them.

I couldn?t quite decide what to title this entry. Among the many possibilities I conjured up where:

-The Most Ridiculous Thing I Have Ever Done

-The Craziest Thing I Have Ever Done

-The Craziest/Most Ridiculous Thing I Will Ever Do in My Life

-Too Much Sake

-Celebrities for a Day

-Washoi!!!

-Baka Gaijin (stupid foreigners)

-John and Johnny?s Excellent Adventure

-John and Johnny?s Bogus Journey??and many others

?choose whichever one suits you.

Japan is renowned for having a lot of strange and crazy festivals. This entry involves one of them. According to Japanzine (the most popular English magazine in Japan) the Konomiya Hadaka Matsuri (literal translation Konomiya ?Naked Festival?) is among the top three weirdest festivals in the country.

As luck would have it, I work in Konomiya. For 364 days of the year it is a quiet, if not downright boring rural town in Japan. However, for one day of the year, the local businessmen cast off their suits, replacing then with Japanese loincloths called fundoshis (or ?nappies? as my English friends Johnny called them?. ?diapers? in North American lingo), drink copious amounts of sake, and run around nearly naked doing ridiculous things. Upon first hearing about this event, I was intent on participating.

As an English teacher, you are forever trying to come up with interesting topics to discuss in class, and I milked this one for all it was worth, talking about it at length with almost every one of my students throughout the month leading up to it.

My personal favourite discussion was one with a young woman named Satsuki. She had grown up in the Konomiya area, so she had some experience with the festival. I asked her if she enjoyed when it came around each year. She said that she liked watching it as a young child, but does not like it anymore. Confused, I asked her ?why not?? To this she answered, ?well, because now I am a nurse at the hospital, and this day is very busy?. Intrigued, I pursued this idea more. As it turns out, participating in the festival can be very dangerous and many people are injured at it every year. It was actually banned for a number of years, and then brought back by popular demand; two years ago, someone even died. As you might expect, upon hearing this, my interest and intent to participate only flourished.

I guess I should explain the full details of what happens at this festival, and why it can result in bodily harm. It goes a little something like this. According to a 700 year old tradition, a week or so before the festival day, a local man is chosen at random from a group of applicants to be the ?shin otoko?, or ?god man?. He is then sent into seclusion in the Konomiya Shinto Shrine, where all of his body hair is shaved, and he lives on only water and rice for three days. On the day of the festival the local townsmen (specifically those aged 23 and 42, the unlucky ages for Japanese men [coincidentally, also my age]?although men of any age can participate) put on their loincloths and headbands (colour-coded to where they live) and march in groups from their homes to the shrine. Each group has a leader(s) who leads an ongoing chant of ?washoi, washoi, washoi?, which is a ritual festival chant?not sure what it means, if anything. Each group also carries a long pole made from something like bamboo which is covered in cloth and messages from all those who could not attend. Every block or so, the men stand the pole up on end and other group members try to climb it. As both the climbers and pole-holders have often consumed a lot of sake throughout the day, this ritual often results in injury, as many climbers fall off, some from substantial heights (note the photos).

Upon reaching the shrine with their bamboo, many of the men turn back and go home. However, the brave ones remain and wait for everyone to arrive. At some point after all the groups have arrived, the shin otoko emerges, completely naked, somewhere around the shrine. At this point a melee ensues as the diaper-dressed and drunken mob of Japanese men all rush the shin otoko in an effort to touch/slap/grab him. If they manage to make contact with him, it is said that their back luck for the next year is passed on to him, so obviously, people are aggressive in their attempts to touch him. If this weren?t crazy enough, the shin otoko also has bodyguards who try to protect him by throwing ice cold buckets of water on the crowd. All this on a cold day in winter.

By now you can likely see the justification behind my proposed titles for this entry. It was a truly ridiculous experience. Originally, my group was supposed to include three people: myself, and my friends Johnny and Steve. Unfortunately, Steve had to work at the last minute, so, in spite of our best efforts to recruit other foreign participants, my group was limited to a duo. That said, plenty of friends came to watch (or point, laugh, jeer, mock, ect.).

Luckily, even though it was a winter day in March, the weather was very nice, sunny and warm. The day began at my apartment where we got dressed (Steve came by before work so we could get some photos). I looked online for directions on putting on a Japanese loincloth, which is just a long sheet of white cloth you wrap around yourself in a specific way. After a few attempts I had mine on. I gave the other boys some simple directions and sent them each to a change room (as you can see from the photos, no undergarments are worn with a loincloth. After some confusion and a lot of childish giggling, the boys were ready. After a few photos, much to the disgust of my other roommate Cody who we forced to take the photos, we headed off to Konomiya. Apparently the train companies were offering free train rides to those participating, as they are assumed to be carrying no money (no pockets in a loincloth). We opted to wear normal cloths overtop though?at least for the trip there.

Upon arrival we met up with a bunch of other Nova teachers who had come to watch, and a few Japanese friends. After stopping by to say hello to the staff (and one student) at work, wearing only our loincloths by this point of course, we headed towards the shrine. The plan was to find the pink team, as that was the headband colour I had chosen at the shop where I bought the costumes. Sure enough, as we neared the Shrine we found a group of Japanese men wearing pink. I was a bit worried that, as foreigners, we would not be allowed to participate. I had done some reading that said many Japanese people are offended when foreigners wear the traditional loincloth. Luckily, whoever wrote those articles was not at this festival. Not only were we not barred from participating, we were practically made the guests of honour. The pink team waived us over and before we knew it we were running the bamboo pole down the shrine path, yelling ?washoi? with the rest of them. We ran up the main entrance, going from one side of the path to the other and being touched and grabbed by the many onlookers?.mainly crazed Japanese women.

After the bamboo song and dance we walked along the side of the path tearing strips of cloth off our headbands to give to people for good luck. This experience was likely the closest I?ll ever come to being a celebrity. The crowed absolutely loved us. They were shouting at us wildly to try and get us to come over so they could grab/slap/touch us and get a piece of our lovely pink headbands.

We spent the next two hours or so hanging around the shrine, making many new Japanese friends, drinking and being merry while we waited for the shin otoko to come out. The Japanese people seemed to be very amused by my broken and, by this point, often slurred Japanese. We met one other foreigner in the crowd as well, an American from Oregon, whom we talked with for a while. We also had an interesting encounter with a very intoxicated Japanese man?he loved us, but didn?t like the police who were trying to arrest him. My friend Eddie was in the crowd filming him, so if you would like to see a rather funny video of this man?s antics visit youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnXlhnD4Fdw If you look closely in the background you can see myself and Johnny?look for us in the pink headbands. Be forewarned that there is some explicit language used in this video. He also posted another video of the entrance ritual that you can watch here: mode=related&search=

Finally, in the late afternoon, the naked man/shin otoko emerged. At this point there was a mad dash for him (this is where people have been trampled in the past). My friend Johnny told me that he got very close to him, and was about to touch him when a man fell over beside him; by the time he had helped the man up, his opportunity had passed. As for me, I don?t even recall seeing him, let alone getting anywhere close enough to touch him. I do however, have vivid memories of being doused with freezing water and scrambling around in a mass of people in what became a river of mud under our feet. By the end of the whole charade I was soaking wet, freezing cold, and covered with cuts all over my legs?needless to say it was one of the best experiences of my life. Sadly, none of my friends in the crowed could get close enough for a picture of this climax; you?ll just have to picture it yourself.

Opting not to put my jeans on over my wet loincloth, I took up the free train offer for the trip home.

A week or so after the festivities, I had yet another interesting conversation with a student. You may remember my exchange with a nurse from the hospital from before. This time, I was speaking to one of the doctors. Luckily, there had been no deaths this year; according to my student, however, there had been a number of smaller injuries: a broken rib, someone requiring stitches in his head, some dehydration, and bumps/bruises. I was also told that four men who turned up had drunk so much sake that they were unable to communicate their names, addresses, or phone-numbers. So, in order to identify them and their injuries, my doctor friend had to paint numbers on their backs to keep track of them. I found this very amusing?..my doctor friend, not so much.