It has been a while since I have posted. It is not like I have been busy working, so I won’t use that as an excuse. I have been studying japanese and improving my reading comprehension.. everything is progressing quite nicely. I am at a point where I can comprehend quite a bit and even reply with something more then a simple ‘Yes, I understand.’
Not a lot going on here. Have been snowboarding a few more times, probably going to squeeze one more in before the season ends (maybe two if we are lucky.) Aikido is going well and I started training in a koryu, or classical martial art system. Takeuchi or take no uchi jujutsu, way of war. This is one of the primary schools that judo developed from. The throws are archaic, but the weapons and grappling are interesting.
Anyways, nakedness… This weekend we went to a matsuri, or festival. This festival is a bit different then most.. it is called the ‘naked’ festival.
What is another word for pirate treasure?
b00ty!
So consider it is near below freezing here right now. We are up in the mountains at a shinto shrine.. So it is obvious that all the men should get blitzed out of their minds on sake, dress up in the equivocal of diaper and fight for a phallic object. The first to get the phallus, get to the shrine and ring the bell with it wins a good amount of money (10000Y ~ 1000USD.) Add to this people throwing buckets of cold water on the people and you have a huge homoerotic fantasy being performed.
In addition to this, the judges started throwing raw motchi into the crowd. Motchi is a ground-up rice base that resembles dough and is about as hard a golf ball and about the same size. Some of the motchi had letters on them and you could claim a prize. This explains why the crowds of people not participating were moshing to get the motchi. L2 won a tent and I won a photo album w00t!
It was actually funny to watch. It makes you realize the the japanese really do not acknowledge homosexuality or see anything wrong with guys humping each other or fondling each other.
Here is a friend that we went with.. the look on his face was pretty much what we had on our faces the whole night..
And because it is waaay to easy to use, flickr.com rocks.
http://flickr.com/photos/eroku/sets/127281/