Play that funky music, wasshoi

There's a poetic simplicity to the Naked Man Festival - it doesn't try to be anything other than thousands of men dressed in loincloths beating each other to a pulp to try and get a stick the size of a Coke can. It must be very liberating to stamp on someone's face for that silly a reason. Given the choice between “participant” and “spectator” however, I soundly ticked the latter. The world really doesn’t need to see me in a loincloth.

Remembering our stingy JET roots, Lis and I shunned the shinkansen and headed out to Okayama on the local trains (which took bloody ages). Fortunately we got there in good enough time to have a decent dinner, because later it would turn out there was very little to eat except other people's children. After a short bus ride (tutting self-righteously at how much noise everyone was making), we set off by ourselves and followed the fireworks and men holding lanterns and gongs to Saidaiji temple. Suddenly, there were hundreds of men wearing nothing but loincloths and socks swarming the area, locked together in impromptu group hugs to keep warm. It probably didn’t help that they were being repeatedly sprayed with water, which I’m told is to purify them before the festival. Once they had been purified and given frostbite, they hurried off again, disappearing into the night along with their shouts of “wasshoi, wasshoi” (the equivalent “heave ho, heave ho”, near as I can reckon, inspiring me to make the joke in the title).

We handed in our tickets and assembled in the standing-room-only spectators’ area and watched wave after wave of loincloths cram into a covered area in the middle. Before long, the seething mass had spilled over on to the ground in front and started to fill that too. The main group restlessly surged back and forward, often sending people tumbling down the steps on either side like the monkeys in the bed. In some cases, the medics would be called in to rescue some unfortunate who hadn’t stood back up again (and I'm sure I'm not the only one who imagined comical bare footprints all over him). Eventually, the last of the nine thousand men (!) were assembled and after a moment of silence, the floodlights came on, the sticks were thrown and all hell broke loose.

Steam poured out of the pagoda as everybody roared and crashed over one another like a big pot of boiling stew. Before long the only indication of where the sticks were was which part of the crowd seemed to be most frantic. I can kind of understand why they were keen though - the main stick is worth 500 thousand yen ($6000). Once it was all over, we joined the crowds streaming out of the temple. The naked men who had managed to untangle themselves limped home, bodies scratched and bruised and big smiles tattooed on their faces. Maybe going through a washing machine of arms and legs is a spiritually uplifting process – who knows? I’m quite happy to take their word for it.

We thought we were being awfully clever leaving a tad early to be able to get the last shinkansen home, but we showed up nearly an hour late for it anyway. After a few drat-and-double-drats (or words to that effect), we thought about our options - traditionally, either stay out all night drinking or find an internet cafe or karaoke place and crash out on the couch. The problem with both of those options is that you tend to wake up with a horrendous headache and smelling like a urinal full of cigarette butts. Clearly getting too old and wealthy for all this, we chose option C and booked into a hotel. We may have seemed boring at the time but after a good night's sleep in hotel pajamas, a hot shower, a cooked breakfast and a hearty toothbrushing, I was very much in the mood to call people up and shout about how good I felt. To complete the indulgence, we then got the shinkansen and lay back with triangular smiles at 285km/hr. We were back in Kobe in half an hour, fairly confident we had made some fantastic decisions.

All up, it was a great weekend but hopefully soon I'll learn how to make it through one without spending in the hundreds. I'm working this Saturday, so hopefully that'll keep my wallet in my pocket for 2 minutes. Still, there's worse thing to spend money on than new experiences and old comforts.