Did Someone Say Penis Festival?

There was a lot of anticipation build up leading into this weekend. Everywhere I went it seemed the usual greeting of 'hello' was foregone for 'Hey, you're going to the Penis Festival, right?' And that's exactly where I went this weekend.

Better known as the Hounen Matusuri here in Japan, rather than being a free-for-all public sexpo the Penis Festival was more about a celebration of fertility. But since nobody in our group actually wanted to get pregnant we went along to see the famed giant penis.

Basically the festival is an ancient tradition to celebrate fertility and renewal. Every year on March 15th, a big party is held at the Tagata-jinga shrine as hundreds of people gather to catch a glimpse of the monster phallus. Each year, a new wooden phallus is craved from a cypress tree. It's about 2.5 meters long and weighs around 400 kilograms. 12 unlucky blokes are desginated to carry the giant penis. They're all supposed to be 42 years old because that's supposedly an unlucky age for men when it comes to fertility.

We organised a huge group to go forth and witness the wonder of the Penis Festival. We were getting (understandably) rowdy in all the excitement. Funnily the boys seemed a lot more excited about the prosopect of seeing all those peni than the girls. We were such a huge group of foreigners that we became a popular attraction ourselves. We kept collecting random people as our group thread through the festival. As we took photos, random Japanese people would run in to pose with us.

Besides the main attraction of the Penis Parade there was plenty to keep me a-giggling all day long. The souvernir store was a delight for the senses. There were penis-shaped lollipops with matching vaginas; keychains with movable parts that show exactly how the birds and the bees do it; an almost posh looking golden keyring (dubbed the goldmember) that had string along the back that enabled people to make it stand to attention and wooden carvings. My personal favourite was the miniature penis with feet. You could wind it up and it bopped around frenetically. I fell over laughing.

Then there were the food stalls. And the Penis Festival fever definitely seeped into the food stalls. There were chocolate covered bananas, giant battered hotdogs and miscellaneous meats on a stick. We rather enjoyed taking salacious photos as we munched on our snacks.

While we waited for the much anticipated parade, we also enjoyed a taiko drumming performance. These guys were great. There were some tiny tykes bashing at those drums before they made way for the big guns who showed us what the art was really about. There was a man walking around with a well endowed mannequin. There was a polaroid attached to where the head shoud have been and if you gave the family jewels a friendly tug, it took a polaroid. Then there was the camera crew that couldn't resist approaching us (told you we were a tourist attraction in ourselves), and we played up the rowdy foreigner stereotype by chanting penis, penIS, peNIS, pENIS, PENIS. I told them that we'd see ourselves on the news the next day, then being deported the day after. I can just imagine the headlines: English teachers fired enmasse for raucous behaviour at family oriented fertility festival.

Then came time to line up along the streets for the parade... There had been much discussion about it beforehand. My coworker and I were fervently hoping that the giant member would be tweaked to shoot forth fountains of milk which would be caught in the mouths of young maidens. And after all the build up and anticipation, I'd like to be able to inform you that the giant penis pounded up that street and with a punishing thrust, exploded into the shrine.

Unfortunately, I think the anticipation of the parade was a lot sweeter than the actual deed. The giant penis took its sweet time getting up that street, teasing us until the allure became frustration. Then it just charged into the shrine like a fumbling teenager. The foreplay was too long and the finish was frankly disappointing.

But I guess the rest of the day had been so perfect that if the parade had been perfect too all of our heads would have exploded. Only in Japan could people get away with parading a giant phallus around and celebrating the fact.

And for all of you who warned me not to get pregnant at the festival, I'm pretty sure I'm in the clear but it COULD be touch and go. In an unsuspecting moment, as I was trying to thread my way out of the penis-mad masses an old woman stuffed a fertility charm (a plant with a ribbon tied around it) into my hand. Uh oh, I hope this doesn't mean I'm pregnant.