The Naked Man Festival

Hadaka Matsuri, or the Naked Man Festival, in Okayama is an event in which thousands of men run around wet and screaming in the cold wearing only fundoshi (loincloths), and then beat the crap out of each other in a battle for a holy stick worth money and good fortune. Okayama isn't far from Fukuyama, so we couldn't miss out on this.

As with any good festival, there was food. Our first stop upon arriving was the grilled beef on a stick stand. Duh!

Then, of course, we watched the march of the naked men:

After they marched through holy water to purify themselves, they all crowded into a temple and beat the hell out of each other in a battle for a holy stick said to grant the holder good fortune for the coming year--part of that good fortune being a monetary prize.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I totally forgot to make a blog entry about our Hatsumōde at Saijo Inari back in January. I'm not doing so well at this blog thing. Sorry! Hatsumōde is the first temple visit of the new year. It's a Japanese New Year celebration, basically. Our good buddies Naoki and Rina took us along with them to Saijo Inari for the event. From what I was able to understand, Saijo Inari is like a temple that honors a fox god called Inari, which is a good explanation for all the nifty stone fox statues they had out there.