ohara hadaka matsuri

And then on Saturday, I went down to Ohara, which is further south along the coast, for the Ohara Hadaka Matsuri! It's apparently one of the biggest events of the year, and it was pretty exciting. For those of you that don't speak Japanese, 'hadaka' means 'naked', and while I didn't actually see anybody celebrating naked (for which I am thankful), all the male participants were shirtless, which is definitely unique among the festivals that I've been to, at least.

So Saturday morning I hopped onto a train, and one transfer and an hour and a half later, I was in Ohara! (Trains are one of my favorite things about Japan. So great.) There were a lot of JETs/WI-ALTs who were planning to go (I think it was like 15-20 people, which is a huge group, especially of foreigners), so we met up at the station (after waiting half an hour for the person who invited us all to show up, haha) and then spent some time at his apartment for a little bit before heading to the festival. I always love seeing the rows of food stands that are always set up at the festivals, even though it's always the same kinds of stands and they repeat every few feet, since seeing them means I'm at a festival!

After getting some festival food - I tried something called buta-tama (I think) which was kind of like okonomiyaki in a more compact, pancake form (and tasty) - we went to the beach for the main event! At almost all festivals, carrying mikoshi, or portable shrines, is a major event, but at the Ohara Hadaka Matsuri, they carry the mikoshi all the way into the water! It was pretty crowded and so it was kind of hard to see, but I did manage to see them, and it was pretty cool. While they were waiting to go in the water, other groups with mikoshi would also toss them up in the air a few times, which I thought was really impressive!

After that we wandered around eating more festival food and just kind of hanging out along the street for a little bit until the parade started. It was pretty impressive to see all the shirtless men carry the mikoshi (though there were some women too!), since that meant they were basically carrying these really heavy wooden shrines on their bare shoulders (whereas usually people have at least sleeves and maybe even extra padding) - there were even a few people with humps that I presume came from years of carrying mikoshi.

The parade ended at the elementary school, where they then all ran in a huge circle, while still carrying the mikoshi! It was definitely too crowded for me to really see anything this time, but I could kind of see the tops of the mikoshi go past at a surprisingly fast pace. They continued running for about ten minutes or so (I think), which again was just plain impressive.

So I'd say the Ohara Hadaka Matsuri was definitely unique among the festivals I've been to, and it was lots of fun! I also got to meet a lot of other JETs/WI-ALTs (and see the ones I already knew again), which is always great. :)