Tagata Fertility Festival

WARNING....The following post may not be suitable for children (although you may see children in some of the pictures, but that's just the Japanese for you)

So yesterday morning, bright and early, myself and 4 friends headed to Tagata, near Nagoya, about 4 hours away. We rented a van from the Autoport (free tolls with government vehicles! otherwise the tolls would have been $130 round trip, ugh!) and hit the road. On a side note, I love road trips with girls, because we always pack a ridiculous amount of snacks and drinks and always make an appropriate number of bathroom/shopping stops.

We got to Tagata around 11 am and once we got to the Fertility Shrine, we saw this and we knew we were in for a good time:Those are chocolate covered bananas, by the way. There was a wide array of appropriately shaped treats for the occassion:We ate, walked around the booths and the shrine, and also walked to a shrine close by where the parade was beginning. We were able to see much of the parade before it actually walked down the street. This wasn't just a bachlorette party gone bad, but actually a religious festival for those people hoping to increase their fertility. We saw several families being blessed by the priests in the shrine, but then there were the other several thousand of us just going "Oh my goodness, another penis." Good times.

Here was the piece de resistance, the portable shrine that is carried through the parade by twelve 42-year old men. Apparently, 42 is the age where men need...well...a purple fertility shrine.

Here we are from left to right: Nicole, me, Alba, Traci and in front: Gizelle.

And I guess while were at it, I might as well give you the full picture because words cannot really describe everything. Pictures are so much better:

Update: I had to take these pics down because Blogger sensored them. They were pretty funny though while they lasted :)