Naked Man Festival

On Saturday, I took a train down to the beautiful city of Okayama, home to the legendary Momotarou. That night there was a festival at a temple that I was participating in, with a group of foreigners from all over Japan. There were tons of Japanese people there, too, of course. This festival involves around a thousand men (I think, I don't know, really) wearing only fundoshi and tabi, which are a piece of cloth wrapped around one like a diaper and cloth shoes, respectively, pushing each other in a giant mass, trying to get one of a few shingi, which are some kind of stick. It's absolutely unbelievable. There's a temple building at the top of some stairs where dudes are just packed in and fighting to get these little sticks. If you manage to get a stick, the goal is to get it down the steps and out the front gate to the temple. A couple of the bigger sticks are worth about a thousand dollars if you can get them out the front. Keep in mind that you are so packed in that you can't really move at all. It's a bit dangerous and these people are actually trying very hard to get the sticks, but they're also generally looking to make sure nobody gets really hurt and are generally friendly. Before the match, if that's what you can even call it, all the men participating run around the temple grounds and the surrounding streets in fundoshi and tabi, including running through a pool of freezing cold water, generally in groups, arms across shoulders, chanting. It's crazy, but crazy fun. Two of the guys in our foreigner group managed to get sticks, which is basically unprecedented. This is the first time that a foreigner has gotten one, I think, though they weren't worth any money. Too bad. For the record, I didn't even get to see the sticks until it was all over and we were back on the bus. It is that insane. Sorry for the unorganized paragraph style.