First you strip in a tent and have a Japanese guy tie your fundoshi. This feels like ten wedgies at once. Then run around the temple in the freezing air, dipping into a pool of ice cold water (which makes your mind go completely blank, it's interesting) chanting together 'Washoi! Washoi!' Heeding good advice we'd all had a couple of drinks beforehand, I wasn't drunk by any means but it was nice to have a little something taking the edge off the cold.
There are some teams, companies mainly it seems, from young salarymen to old timers, all bonding through that classic ritual of fighting over lucky sticks. (?) And a bunch of yakuza, who wear black fundoshi (everyone else is in white) although the only one I was struggling up against (ooh betty) in the temple seemed more cheery than your regular competitor. Here's me avoiding the paps.
When we all pack into Saidaiji Temple, it's proper madness. I was lucky enough to be in the centre most of the time, because round the edges are where the stairs are up to the top and most injuries happen through falling (or being thrown) down the stairs. When you're in the massive pack of bodies, you basically have no control over anything, and as it gets closer to midnight, somehow more and more people shove in the space that was already more than completely full. With so many people all stepping on your feet, I frequently simply lifted both my feet off the ground, and the squeeze of bodies was so tight that I was carried easily and didn't fall a single centimetre towards the floor. For me it was a 'lets protect our lungs' exercise as I was so close to the centre where unbelievable squashing was going on that the second I lifted my arms from my chest, the massive squash would rush in and completely wind me making it really hard to breathe. (These two photos courtesy of Lena as I was kind of busy. I don't know when she took the temple pic, but there doesn't seem to be as much fighting as later on... I'm way inside the temple in the middle somewhere.)
At midnight, monks throw shingi (lucky sticks) into the crowd, where people fight over them. The crowd starts to undulate like waves, you get pulled completely helpless side to side and backwards, which is much more scary as it's towards the steps. I had to hang on to a pillar a couple of times to avoid falling off the platform. A couple of the sticks are genuine 'super lucky' and some are fake 'a little bit lucky' sticks. My mate Tommi managed to get one of the slightly lucky ones (we assume it was anyway), but it involved a lot of crawling, getting trampled on, shoving sticks down his fundoshi (ouch) and getting a massive cut down his arse cheek. Nice. Loads of people seemed to be getting a bit hurt, and later I found out someone died this year :o( That's not cool.
But I personally had a lot of fun, and although I'm not sure if I would do it again, I'm glad I did and I'm sure it'll be one of my defining memories of Japan.
Next day, only slightly sore everywhere, had a little wander round Okayama; I really like the city. Checked the castle briefly, it's black as opposed to Himeji's white castle and quite a lot smaller. Nice views of the city, again like Himeji.
Next to it though, there are beautiful gardens. Even though they were mainly brown because we visited only a couple of weeks after the grass burning ceremony, they were gorgeous.
There were loads of old Japanese guys with stupidly expensive camera equipment taking pictures of the first cherry blossoms of the year.
This next one will only make sense to those in Japan: Galmy Mart! A parody of Family Mart, although it seems to be a den of sin rather than the life support system that is a conbini.
Also: how could you not love a city with an arcade this big and a red archway proclaiming this?
Only if you were DEAD INSIDE.
Shinkansen home and back to Aogaki where it is finally getting a bit warmer. I feel like I'm coming out of hibernation, it's great.
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