Lolly's J Birthday

For Lolly's birthday bash in Tsu, we were all instructed to do our best to look J. Some say we succeeded admirably. Others say we looked like weirdo gaijin. You decide.

The birthday gal

Best dressed - Marina and Lauren

Fran and Craig looking J

Fern, Sam, Lauren

Ahh sweet - Lolly and Sean

Ise Katagami

Near Yokkaichi is the city of Suzuka, mostly famous for its Formula 1 racetrack. However, if you're of an artistic/crafty bent, there are some small remnants of the once-flourishing Ise Katagami industry. Artisans work for weeks or months over a single piece of handmade mulberry paper smaller than A4, hand-cutting intricate patterns. When finished, these are used to print kimonos and other fabrics. In the Edo period Suzuka had a thriving monopoly on the industry, but of course these days machines usually do the work. A couple of local artisan cooperatives still keep the handmade tradition alive, and they showed us their moves gladly.

"Fertility" Festival

We took a day off school to visit the very famous Hounensai festival near Nagoya. For centuries, the shinto priests there have carved an enormous new phallus each year out of a freshly chopped cypress tree. The whole town throngs with phallus paraphernalia - phallus candy, chocolate-coated (and lovingly shaped) bananas, phallus prayer books, and so on. There's a fun-filled procession from one shrine to another, replete with maidens bearing phalluses of their own. And Fiona was forcibly seized by one of the officials and made to pose with the biggest phallus of them all; the cameras went mad as a blond blue-eyed gaijin kissed the star of the show.
(To view a Japanese TV news report, including token interviews with gaijin, click here.)

This wins the prize for the most prosaic moment of the day: the giant phallus procession waits for a train to pass, then traverses the level crossing. Click on the picture to see it, er, bigger.