Last weekend I went with Steve, Boris, and Levi to Kawasaki to visit the infamous fertility festival. The fertility festival (aka penis festival) is a festival that promotes safe sex and also raises money for HIV research.
From Atsugi, it took about an hour to get to Kawasaki-daishu where the festival was taking place. After a quick lunch at McDonalds we headed towards the temple. Right from the train station it was obvious that this festival is very popular amongst foreigners. There were so many different types... Russians, Australians, American...
Anyways as we walked down the street to the temple we apparently caught the parade. The parade was really interesting.... basically a bunch of people holding platforms of penis statues marched down the street singing and chanting.
The biggest penis statue was a pink one with all transsexuals holding it. Apparently the festival originated to promote safe sex among transsexuals, but the meaning expanded over the years.
The temple was gorgeous although crowded as hell. It was really hard to walk around and buying stuff was hell. They sold these penis lollipops that were extremely popular. We all gave money to Steve and told him to go buy a bunch of them as it was easier than all of us buying them individually. About ten minutes later Steve emerged from the crowd of people with a handful of penis candy.
There were these big wooden penises too that you could sit on and have your picture taken. It was really funny and people were really getting into it. Given this chance may never have reach me again, I decided to get a picture.
Afterwards I headed to Yokosuka to the American Navy base. They were holding a huge cherry blossom festival and were allowing everyone to come on base and celebrate. It was extremely popular among the Japanese. There were thousands and thousands of people. Honestly it was way more crowded than Comiket or Tokyo Game Show.
Anyways, after waiting in line, getting our bags searched (where they found penis candy) we were on base. Levi and I had come from the Taco Bell (they can't be found in Japan), but we were devistated to hear that it was blocked off and reserved for military people only. Still they had a ton of American food and beer there and the environment was really nice. It was in a gorgeous area also and the weather was relatively decent.
All in all it was a good weekend. After the base, I went with a few people at work to an Otaku drinking party that I will write about in my next post. I am trying to do much more outdoors stuff since the weather is getting better. I have a lot of good stuff to write about.
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