Life in Japan - Pictures galore !! Arcades, Temples, Rainy days, etc

KANAMARA MATSURI- Held every April 15th at Wakamiya Hachimangu Shrine in Kawasaki Japan, this festival is about as wild and pagan as they get. People of all ages participate in a parade in which most of the participants sport a gigantic penis, and a giant lingam is carried through the streets. Females ride a penis-shaped seesaw, and men, women and children get their picture taken embracing a phallic statue. You can also buy penis shaped candies, or dress up as your favorite cartoon character with one part of his anatomy dramatically enlarged. The whole thing is presided over by a priest, and arcane Shinto rituals are carried out as well.
The festival is said to celebrate the vanquishing of a demon that lived in a woman's vagina and would bite off the penises of her lovers! According to legend, a local craftsman fashioned a steel phallus which broke the demon's teeth. In the Edo period courtesans would come to pray for good business and protection from sexually transmitted diseases and today it is used to promote AIDS awareness and safe sex. The Kanamara festival is held at Kawasaki Daishi Station on the Keihin Daishi in the beginning of April. If you would like to see a great free video of the Kanamara festival visit TokyoDV.com, a site featuring amateur videos from Japan. You can see the penis festival, rock bands and goths in Inokashiro park, or the cheesy graduation ceremony of a kimono school. There's a lot of hilarious stuff here. The URL is: http://www.tokyodv.com/.


taken from http://www3.tky.3web.ne.jp/~edjacob/festival.html

 

Oh THAT festival. There's a penis shrine not that far away from where I live. Maybe about 40 minutes drive, Never actually been inside and can't say that I ever will.

Yakumo

 

haha, for real?

 

yeah really ! You are meant to pray to it before you have a baby. It is said that if you make fun of it then you will grow impudent :lol:

Yakumo

 

oh well.. just feels kind of strange to me. but on the other side people from other countries probably think some of the swedish traditions and stuff is kind of weird too.. (atleast I do )

 

I went to Nagasaki over the weekend and as always made good use of the phone

First off are a few shots from a bridge that links between Sasebo and Nagasaki. The bridge is extremely high which you can't really tell from some of the shots but if you compare the shot of the opposite bridge's height from the sea you'll have an idea of just how high this bridge I was on was.





At points in the bridge there are glass floor panels that allow you to see the sea below. Quite a drop that would most certainly kill you.



Here's a view of part of Nagasaki City. As you can see it's quite hilly.



While there I visited the foreign settlement. Nagasaki was the first place in Japan were foreigners were allowed to live. The first Catholic church is there as pictured below.



There are also quite a few very pretty Japanese women dressed up in old fashion western clothing. These two were kind enough to pose for me



Nagasaki is also home to one of the biggest Mitsubishi Heavy Industry plants (one in Shimonoseki where I live as well) that made some of the worlds biggest ships. You can see a mammoth of a ship in the docks in the below picture.



The three odd things in the below picture are actually world war 2 radar antennas used by the Japanese to detect American war planes. These are no longer in use but remain as a tourist attraction.



Now you may have heard that Japanese hotel rooms are quite small. Well let me show you just how small they are ! The below two pictures and ASF video show the entire room (bathroom is not shown in the picture. The ASF video shows someone in the bath which I didn't know at the time but unfortunately for you, you don't see anything apart from some leg.)




The link to the video - http://www.segagagadomain.com/z-hotelroom.ASF Use right click and save as to download the video.

A big temple gate I spotted on the way home



Finally some very odd tree shaped island that I tooka picture of while stook in a 2 hour long traffic jam. There's also a ASF video clip of these strage looking islands.



The link to the video - http://www.segagagadomain.com/z-trafficjam.ASF Use right click and save as to download the video.

Yakumo

 

Now that is one small bed, my knees would probably reach the end! h:

Many thanks for all that!

Windows Media Player was having an audio codec error for me, and might affect others. You can find the appropriate audio codec for the vids (IN THIS LINK)

 

ah, yes I forgot about the audio on the videos. You need the SHARP Audio plug in. They have it on the Japanese sharp home page and I'm sure theres an English one out there.

The beds are 180 cm long which is actually how tall I am. Just as well I don't normally sleep stretched out. My bed at home is only 200 cm long.

Yakumo

 

What a relief! I thought for a second that disregard of the penis gods might bring on impotence.

 

The videos seem to work fine with no plug ins on quick time 7 on mac, presumably PC too.

 

Hey Yakumo, the hotel room bathroom was fascinating. Any extra footage of it

 

Yep, but not for public viewing :redface: I had no idea that she was in there either ! I'd just come back from the 7/11. I thought that she had gone to the pool or something since I couldn't hear a sound from the bath room.

Yakumo

 

hehe, keep up the great work

 

Here's a shot of Yomiya park that I pass on the way to work. This place is beautiful ! I like to hang out here at lunch times if the weather is nice. Best thing is that all the collage girls come here too :dance:



Yakumo

 

I actually looked through all of the pages of this topic. So gorgeous. I hope someday I am able to save up enough money to venture a good couple of weeks in Japan. Not to mention my niece also lives there. Absolutely breathtaking.:icon_bigg

 

I demand more pictures! ;p

 

:lol: I bet you do ! Hmm, maybe in the future if I can get a few off without being noticed. The problem with the phone camera is that it only has a 2x zoom so you really have to be close to the thing you want to photograph.

Yakumo

 

No worries, I am going to Tokyo for a month this summer anyway, so I guess there will be enough time to take pictures myself. ;p

 

Some more pics...

Hi, folks. My Golden Week holidays are coming to a close, and I had a great time walking with friends and sightseeing.

So, I have a few more pics of Japanese locales for your viewing. See here:
http://disgruntleddesigner.com/chrisc/walkabout/walk2.html
http://disgruntleddesigner.com/chrisc/walkabout/jpculture.html

Can you spot the hidden Sega Saturn?


Anyway, a little unrelated, I also released a demo of a new game I'm working on... Tongueman's Logic for the PC-Engine.
http://disgruntleddesigner.com/chrisc/TMLogic.html

 

Beautiful game you've got there, if I didn't know I'd assume it was licensed!