Wanna go to the Pants Party?

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Himeji Fighting Shrine Festival (Himeji no Kenka-Matsuri), which was a wicked fun day out in the sun, watching naked dudes carry and crash giagantic, heavy shrines into each other. There are a lot of festivals this time of year because of the rice harvest and the seasons changing, the Japanese of olden days would carry these shrines around their rice fields so that the crops would be blessed and the local god of the village could take a tour of the land. It's a total contrast to the ceremony I went to last year, which was somber and religious - this one has more of a carnival atmosphere with lots of food/drink stalls, and tons of tourists - they even sold tickets for stadium style seating!

Here's some pics, courtesy of Sara Revell, since my camera has been out of order:


This was the scene of 99% of the dudes at the festival. They had been drinking all weekend - getting ridiculously tossed, and having a ball. The thongs they are wearing are more casual versions of the ones sumo wrestlers wear, and are called "fundoshi." I bet you the sunburn takes the fun right out of the fundoshi (sorry, I had to).


I dunno how many, it may have taken like 50 or 60 dudes to lift and carry one of these things. I'll post my shots later, and you can see the agony on their faces as they are straining to avoid death by 2 ton shrine. After they hoist them up, while chanting "YOOO-YA-SA!" (it's supposed to power them up, like the mushroom in Super Mario), they crash them into the opposing team's shrines, in an ultimate display of Japanese manhood. As if the funny underpants weren't enough.


East meets West. Nobody told me abou the dress code!


Even the kids get into it.


I love the look on this guy's face. This is during the lunch break, all the shrine-bearers take lunch and lounge around for awhile, and re-whet their whistles for the final showdown.

... You know it just occurred to me how similary this festival is to the Folsom Street Festival in San Francisco. FSF is a bondage/S and M/kinky sex festival in San Francisco, and it's basically throngs of dudes dressed in leather chaps, harnesses, exposing their bare asses and getting ridiculously hammered all day. I guess Japanese and American culture aren't so different after all!