Booty Call

Time for a new post. Reading about other peoples' "charming students" is like having to listen to someone's dream they had last night, or having to look at pictures of someone's kids. It's only that exciting, so you smile and nod, and make the appropriate sounds at the expected times.
So, to make up for the "oh my kids are so adorable" post, the next one will be about something we all like:


Ass.


The 17th of February brought the Hadaka Matsuri ("naked man festival") to the prefecture of peaches. (Peaches.. naked ass.. uhm..) A bunch of gaijin from prefectures all around met up in Okayama City and got soaked to the bone by the persistent rain (and chilled to the bone by the leftover winter). The running boys left an hour before us, and used their extra time to get nekkid and nappied by some old Japanese men.


(I like this photo, because it reminds me of Church festivals I used to go to as a child. Only difference is: all the old ladies are Japanese. They are selling oden and sake instead of jaffels and pancakes. And there's a freezing foreigner wearing a tiny piece of white cloth instead of his Sunday Best)




So, we met up with the dripping, shivering, semi-naked guys, laughed at them, took photos of their skinny white butts, laughed at them some more, and then made our way to the viewing deck from where we'd have a Class-A view on the men running through the holy pool of spiritual disinfection.

On the bus we were told that umbrellas are unacceptable, and by the time we made it to the viewing deck, it wasn't funny anymore. I was cold, wet, and I would have been miserable, was it not for the energy in the air and the chu-hai in my bag.



After one, two, maybe three dips in the ice cold pool while chanting "Washoi! Washoi!" , the fleshy mass of guys headed to the temple where they waited for the lights to be killed at midnight. Two sticks were dropped, a lot of movement took place, one guy was trampled to death in the madness, many injuries sutained, and in the end the Yakuza (Jap mafia) won the game, as tradition holds it.



We were too far from the temple to really witness the madness - all we saw was a sea of skin-coloured movement, people falling down the stairs like lemmings, and disgruntled participants moving away from the chaos after a while. Some friendly Japanese people gave us their umbrella and made small talk, and we returned when the sticks were (probably) found. We bought chocolate just as an excuse to stand in the shop for a while, and moved on when we realised we are equally wet, indoors or out. Dame'ed by the police, we had to wait for the participants to walk back, giving us a wonderful close-up view as a take-home memory of the festival.
I only returned from Okayama City at 11 or so the next morning, and channel-hopped mindlessly while running a bath.
I was lucky enough to catch the last few minutes of a news bulletin about the Hadaka Matsuri. On it, they showed a fat dude running toward the barrier like mad with the magic stick in his hand. Unfortunately, he made quite a scene of having the stick, and before he made it to the end, he was ruthlessly tackled by a team of 5 guys in black fundoshi (the g-strings). They started beating the crap out of him, got the stick, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win in the Hadaka Matsuri.