Kanamara Penis Festival: Dicks, Dicks Everywhere

The time has finally come.
 Twice in the past have I missed out on the Kanamara Festival due to work, but that streak has finally been broken. This year, I took all precautions necessary to not miss my third chance. And I'm so glad I did. The Kanamara Festival - or the Festival of the Iron Phallus, as it would be named in English - is fascinating, fun, and a worthwhile experience, on top of being something I've heard about long before I had even come to Japan. This is the stuff of legend. What a good time it is.

"I bow only to you, Lord Cock and Balls."

Let's start off with a little bit of history. The site of the festival is a small shrine in the town of Kawasaki, now located right beside a preschool establishment. It's a strange choice of placement (the kindergarten was, of course, built after the shrine itself,) but a little context can help clear things up.
 In the olden days, people would come to the shrine and pray for all things sex related.
 Some accounts have it that prostitutes were the most numerous visitors, praying that they not catch any diseases. Often, too, did people pray here for their marriages, or for an easy childbirth, or for fertility. However, the most well-known story is more of a legend, with a lot less fact involved. Stories tell of a woman with a demon hidden in her vagina, who would bite the penis off any man who would dare have intercourse with her. In a last resort attempt to rid herself of the curse, she went to a blacksmith, who broke the vagina demon's teeth with a penis forged of iron. Hence, the Iron Penis Festival!

Dicks EVERYWHERE.

 On to the excitement. On the day of the Kanamara Matsuri, the first Sunday in April, all matter of stands are put up, just like any other Japanese festival. However, on top of selling the regular food items such as chicken or squid on skewers, a whole plethora of dick-related items are also sold! There are wooden dildos and toys and key-chains, but particularly popular are the (in)famous penis lollipops, which sell in great numbers - leading, of course, to a bunch of people sucking on penis shaped lollipops on the festival grounds: men, women, and even children!

Notice my less popular vagina pop.

The festival easily draws thousands of people. Most of them are young adults just looking to soak in the happy, fun atmosphere, but there are also numerous curious foreigners, and the occasional daring person seeking to take advantage of the very sexually-liberated ambiance to do something they couldn't get away with elsewhere. Enter a woman in latex with a hole cut out to expose her ass, a man with a giant dick hat, an old guy with no pants. And people still bring kids here? Truly, anything goes on this day. Ask anyone if they mind you taking pictures, and they generally don't.
 And of course, no great festival is complete without a giant float being carried across the streets. After a very ritualistic prayer by an important priest, the floats are blessed and the go is given for them to be lifted off the ground and brought out of the shrine grounds.
 The procession is actually beautiful, with young maidens leading the way, giant colorful banners being flown, holy priests marching along, and, of course, the giant penis floats. First comes the holiest one, a black penis the length of a grown man's forearm, carried along by any one who volunteers to, as they chant to give their companions and themselves the strength to bolster the heavy, enshrined float. But it's the next one that draws the most attention. The most well-known one float is a one meter-and-a-half tall pink penis. As if that's not enough to draw the eye, this float can only be carried by transvestites in pink garb. That's right. The float is carried by drag queens.
 The Kanamara Matsuri is lots of fun, guys. You really don't get a chance to see anything like it elsewhere in the world (though there is another penis festival in Nagoya.) I simply wouldn't recommend missing it. It's fun, it's free, and it's unforgettable.