The post date for my last entry tells me it's been almost a month since my last post.
And I had promised a post the week after my last one!


All I can say is:
I'm sorry for the wait.

What exactly kept me from posting a new entry?
Well, to put it bluntly, life happened.
The ups and downs that come with life happened to be mostly downs last month, and kept me far away from the computer.


However I am back, and bringing you two new posts today! This post will be a quick recap of several events that have happened in the last month, and the next will be a list of various online resources useful when learning Japanese. Not specifically sites to learn Japanese from, but sites that are good to use as supplements to your learning.


Now, on to the main event! Photos and stories galore!
Those with slow internet connections may want to go get a cup of coffee or go file their taxes while all the photos load up.



First things first, I sadly do not have any awesome pictures of my awesome fiber optic internet line getting installed. The landlord refused permission to have NTT install the line through the wall, so we had to have it brought in through our window. Sadly, it wasn't as awesome of an install as I thought it would be. However, it is relatively faster than my last connection, which is awesome. No lag time in World of Warcraft in the mornings!



In the place of fiber optic installation pictures, I will add to the thousands of photos online of a very peculiar spring festival.

Every March the city of Komaki in Aichi Prefecture, the neighboring prefecture of Gifu who's capital is Nagoya, has a set of shrines that put on a harvest/fertility festival, known as a hounensai (豊年際). These shrines are Oogata Shrine (大縣神社) and Tagata Shrine (田縣神社). Tagata Shrine always has their festival on the 15th, while Oogata Shrine has theirs on the previous Sunday. Oogata Shrine's festival is relatively small and unknown, even though it occurs on a weekend. An image search on Google only brings up 149 hits, very few of which are actually of the shrine. Tagata Shrine, however, brings up 2650 hits. Nearly every single hit is an image of the festival.

I will warn you now. If you are at your place of work, or have young children/immature adults around you, please do not Google search this festival, nor scroll down past here.


This year the two festivals ran together, which I did not know, so I missed out on Oogata Shrine's festival. I dragged my husband to Tagata Shrine early in the morning, hoping to miss the crowd. However, I was dead wrong in my timing.


At only 10am, nearly 3 hours before the actual main events of the festival would start, the temple was already packed.
From the first glance, this looked like any other shrine you'd see in Japan. Typical styled shrine buildings, large stone torii out front, gardens everywhere.
The always-a-must food booths for festivals were also everywhere you looked. We made sure to pick up some yummy Hida Beef ka-bobs, and chocolate-filled taiyaki.



It wasn't until you got further into the shrine grounds, past the taiko drummers, that you notice this is not your typical shrine.
Every where you look are rocks that are phallic shaped. Either naturally shaped or carved by hand, every corner hides several small phalluses. Next thing you know, there are vendor tables selling phallic-shaped candies, ashtrays, incense burners and keychains.




They had phallic candy in several flavors
As well as many different phallic-shaped objects for gifts to take home with you.




As my husband described it, it seemed we had walked into the world's largest sausage fest. But what was the point of all of these phalluses?
Turns out, the deity of Tagata Shrine is a female harvest and fertility deity, and all of the phallic stones, carvings, candy, etc. were gifts and offerings to the deity in hopes for a bountiful harvest and healthy children. Oogata Shrine, the one we didn't get two, houses a male harvest and fertility deity and gets gifts and offerings of female genitalia.



Around 2pm, a parade from the nearby Kumanosha Shrine (熊野社) starts that brings three mikoshi floats to the main shrine of Tagata Shrine. One is an offering float, one is the male deity from Oogata Shrine, and one...I'm not sure what it is, to be honest with you. The offering float contains a newly-carved phallus, made from a single cypress tree. The thing is huge, and sticks out from both sides. There were two or three teams of men, all aged 42 (an unlucky age for men despite being the answer to the ultimate question), who take turns carrying the offering.







The other two floats are a red float, that looks much like a shrine itself, and a elaborate float. The red float, pictured on the left here, carries a statue of Takeinadene-no-mikoto, the deity of Oogata Shrine. Legend has it he was a warrior who married a girl from the village where Komaki now stands. The girl is the deity enshrined in Tagata Shrine, Tamahime-no-mikoto. Sadly, I did not get a picture of the figure inside of this, as much as I wanted to.
The little torii gate in front of the float did make me giggle, though. The Japanese can be very detailed with these things.






The last float, the really elaborate one held this guy:
No clue who he is. Neither the English pamphlet that I bought for 100 yen nor the informational website I found mentions it. My guess is either it's a second image of Takeinadene-no-mikoto, or the deity of Kumanosha Shrine. If anyone can find any information, I'd love to know!







For all three of these floats, as well as several groups of shinto priests and a group of 36-year-old women holding freshly-carved wooden phalluses (36 is unlucky for women), it takes about an hour to an hour and a half to make the 1.5 kilometer walk between shrines.
Once the mikoshi have made it to Tagata Shrine, the offering mikoshi is brought inside the main shrine, where it will rest for a year until the next hounensai brings a new offering.
Around 4pm there is a mochinage, or rice cake-throwing, where a bunch of the priests and special guests lob lucky rice cakes at the crowd. This is QUITE dangerous, and several times they warned that the elderly, pregnant women, people with kids, and people with eyeglasses should refrain from joining in as the shrine is not responsible for any injuries received while trying to catch a rice cake.

Overall, it was a unique experience, and both my husband and I were glad we went. The festival has gained a lot of popularity with foreign tourists, and a good 30% of the visitors to the festival were not of Japanese decent. There was also a random Japanese man dressed up in full cowboy gear, except for chaps. He also had a guitar case with him, which prompted my husband and I to stay far away from him, in case the guitar case held a machine gun, like the movie Desperato.

If anyone ever comes visit the Nagoya area in March, I completely suggest this festival. I think it's about 700 yen from Nagoya's Meitetsu train station to Tagata Shrine, which makes it a very affordable day trip.
Next year, my husband and I will definitely make plans to go to Oogata Shrine's festival, so I hope this blog sticks around so I have somewhere to post pictures!


Now, there is still one more thing to talk about.
However, I believe this post is long enough, so I will stop here and start a new one. So I guess you guys are lucky and get three posts today!