THE PENIS FESTIVAL!!!!!!!

Omgomgomgomg today was the day!!!!

The day I've been waiting over a year for!

I went to Inuyama's PENIS FESTIVAL!!!

(Also the day I became the most famous person in Japan for a couple of hours)

I woke up and got ready and then Yuko called everyone to breakfast. Ken and Miya took a while to wake up, but I went in to eat. She let me start eating right away since she knew I had to go.

She made pancakes and they were delicious!! I had them with honey. :)

I got two!

She had hers with peanut butter and told me how in the English class she teaches, they'd been watching an American short film thing where the kids were having a party. And they ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and now she knew if them because of me! She said all her students really wanted to try them lol.

Then I finished getting ready and left. I met Esteban at Ichinomiya station at 9. 

We took the JR to Nagoya. My card had expired yesterday, so I had to pay to get to Nagoya. :( I decided of pay on the way home too and tomorrow when I go to Nagoya, and then just renew my card when I get back from Tokyo, or else it would expire right before my last day of school and that would suck. 

Then we hopped on the Meitetsu line (my first time riding it!) to Inuyama's, where we got off and got on another Meitetsu to backtrack to Tagata Jinja-Mae, the stop we wanted.

Cigarette vending machines!

Schedule of the festival events

Wood carvings you could buy outside the station exit...

More of the wood carvings

Penis and vagina lollipops

They're everywhere!!

More dick lollies

From there, we followed all the people to the penis festival!

Esteban wanted to stop in a bakery first, so we did that. The bakery had normal bread, as well as some penis things...

Penis lollipops in the bakery

Rolled crackers in the bakery. With a penis mascot guy too!

Penis pancake things

Of course there had to be a giant wooden dick in the bakery

Penis pancakessss

 Then we headed down to the festival.

Entrance to the festival!

The massive shrine - Kumano Shrine

Taiko performance! Lots of little kids in it

 Esteban wanted to watch the taiko performance. Since I'd already seen one at the Vagina festival, I headed around the shrine to look at the other stuff.

Penis bell at another small shrine. I rang it later ;)

Penii (that's the plural of penis, right?)

Giant penisss

The Ema have penii on them!

Cool structure to tie your bad fortunes on

Lucky penis charm you could buy

Look at dem chisai (small) penii

You could buy a penis Ema to write your wish on

Or, you know, a book with a penis on it...

Penis crackers!

Penis lolly pops

More penis lollipops

Penis wood carvings

I wanted the Rilakkuma mask! But it was 800 yen :(

Penii with itty bitty testicles. I liked how the lady was carving the banana to make it look more like a penis.

Penis things...

Cute character lollypops!!

Self explanatory...

Cute yatai!!

Okra, maybe?

Squid on a stick

The same lady I bought the banana from at the vagina festival! Except this time her bananas had penis-shaped chocolates on them! I asked her if she made the chocolates and she said she she bought them, so I asked her where lol. I want them!

 Then I went back over to the taiko show and I ran into Rana and Ben and some other Ryuugakusei from Nanzan! We grabbed Esteban and I told everyone about the penis shrine area next to the shrine with the penis bell, so we all went over there.

Penis things.

The penis shrine. The ratio's not quite right...

Everyone went up and rubbed the testicles. So I did too!

I made Esteban touch the vagina rock, haha

 Then I told everyone I wanted a banana and marshmallow dick, so we headed back over to the food stalls!

Yuss got my banana penis! It was sooo good!

Esteban and me with our dicks

And Rana and me!

Mmmmmm

I saw this guy licking a hot pink penis lollipop and was pointing to it to show Taylor, when the guy saw me and raised it and smiled. I went up to him and pointed at it and said "hoshii!" (I want), and he offered it to me, haha.

My friends and I made jokes after that about how a guy had offered me his dick to lick, haha.

I also saw a group of really cute guys, all with marshmallow dicks and when they saw me looking at them, they waved their dicks at me (the marshmallow ones, I mean).

More vagina and penis pops!

Aww, cute Rilakkuma pops!

Ben bought rice wrapped in bacon

Ben with his bacon penis

Guys dressed up all cool

 Taylor and I wanted to buy penis lollipops, so we did!

I got two, pink for me and blue for Bridget!

Taylor got pink too!

 I was going to save my lollipop to eat at home in May with my sister, but I decided I wanted to eat it while I was at the penis festival, haha. So I unwrapped it and ate it.
WOW, WHAT A RESPONSE I GOT FOR DOING THAT!!
Taylor and I were literally swarmed for the next two hours by Japanese people wanting to take our picture and foreigners (there were SOOO many foreigners at this festival!) asking us where we got the pops, haha (they were in a kind of hidden location).
Holy crap, were the Japanese people obsessed with the fact that white girls were sucking dick lollipops. This one old lady came over to us and put her camera really close to us and we smiled and held up our lollipops for her, but she told us to put the lollipops in our mouth "because it would be cute." We were like um, no, you dirty old granny. (jk, we didn't say that, but we wanted to).
This one guy taking pictures and movies for the news in Germany took a video of us licking our pops, so we're going to be on German news haha!
Anyway, a lot of the guys pointing at us and talking among themselves and then wanting to take pictures with us were really cute, so I made them also take a picture with my camera!

This was the group of guys who waved their dicks at me! I got a pic with them later.

The guy who offered me his dick

First dude who wanted a pic with us

These dudes were awesome. They wanted a pic with us too

Cool float!

These guys all held up their banana dicks and touched them together haha. Dick toast!

We found a cowboy!

And a crossdresser wanted a pic with us...

More guys wanting a pic with us

And more...

This girl was double fisting so Taylor wanted a pic with her!

 After we took that pic with the girl double fisting, the three of us were SWARMED with a HUGE crowd of people snapping photos of us.
I felt like a celebrity! ;)
We had to fight them off us in order to leave, haha.

So many

So, so many

So, so, so many. (These guys were holding papers up so we'd look at them)

After that, Taylor and I bit the tips of the lollipops off, so they just looked like regular lollipops and we stopped getting so many people taking creeper shots of us. Although, not before these guys in purple snuck shots of us:

Preparing for the festival

More festival preparation

 I decided I wanted to go check out the other shrine that was nearby, so I grabbed Esteban and he, Taylor, and I headed over.
The other shrine was where all the festival floats were chilling.

The 280 kg (620 pound), 2.5 meter (96 inch)-long wooden penis. Holy crap.

The flag... It creeps me out

I touched the giant penis. Those guys saw I wanted to and brought me to the front of the crowd so I could, haha. So nice!

Little penii at this shrine

Cool gong

The floats!

 We went back to the main shrine for the prayer and then got bored again pretty quickly. We'd gotten to the festival at 10 that morning and the parade wasn't until 3!
Taylor wanted to leave at this point because she had stuff to do, so she bought a crepe and then left. Esteban and I headed to another nearby shrine that I wanted to go see (I had a map with all the shrines marked on it).

Inuyama's drain covers!

This guy with his dressed up dogs...

Entrance to the shrine

The next shrine

 The shrine had a really pretty forest behind it that Esteban and I walked through.
On the way back to the main shrine, we found a hill overlooking Inuyama. It was really pretty!

Back at the main shrine, we bought some food. I got takoyaki. I'd seen 7 for 500 yen, but I walked all the way to the takoyaki stall I'd seen when we first walked in and they were 8 for 500 yen there! But they were disgusting! They were really uncooked and seriously paled in comparison to the one's I'd eaten in Osaka.
After we sat on the tatami benches and ate, I was thristy so we headed to the nearby supermarket. On the way, we found Rana and Ben sitting on the ground, so we got drinks and joined them. I got the momo water I had at Nanzan that time (it was cheaper at this supermarket).
Then Rana and Ben went to go eat more food, so Esteban and I went to go watch the parade. We were going to walk along the road as it passed, but when we got to the road, the sides of the road were so packed with people, we couldn't walk! So we found spots on a raised part to stand and watch it.

Guy dressed as a scary oni!

The creepy veiny penis with hairy balls flag

 In the parade, these girls walked around carrying wooden penii. If you rubbed them, you got good luck. So of course I rubbed it!

 

This old guy was waving this tassel around, saying to touch it, but only women! Men were not allowed to touch it, haha. So I touched it!

When the wind blew, we got to see what was in the float!

The tree float

The giant dick!

So long!

Free sake! Yes, please :)

 After the parade passed, Esteban and I headed back to the main shrine, where it ended, to see it finish.

Helicopter getting coverage of the parade

Parade coming!

Penis entering the shrine

Super short video of the penis bouncing before entering the shrine! 

 After the giant penis came in, Esteban and I headed to the mochi area to get good seats for the mochi throwing! We got there 30 minutes early, so it was a long wait. I knew we were going to get trampled once it started...
They kept coming on the loudspeaker and saying in both English and Japanese, that the area was full and elderly, women, and children should stay out because it could be dangerous!

So many people!!

Me in the sea of Japanese people!

When it finally started, it was chaos! People tripping and falling around. There were a lot of people on the ground trying to get the fallen mochi. One guy stuck his arm between my legs to grab a mochi, and that was not okay!

Esteban caught one!! I couldn't believe it! I'd told him he probably wouldn't be able to, but he did!

He said he was leaving after he caught it, but I stayed a bit longer. I realized I was too short to catch any, though, so I left too and met him where we'd planned to meet.

Then we headed out to go home.

I'm glad I'd decided we take the Meitetsu line, because look at the side of the station for the subway! So crowded!!

Our side was relatively empty.

On the train back, Esteban let me have his mochi! It was rock hard lol.

So big!!

We also met these guys at Inuyama who rode back to Nagoya with us. They'd been to the penis festival too and bought a penis lucky charm thing and took a bunch of pictures. We had a conversation in Japanese with them!

At Ichinomiya, Esteban was meeting his host family to go out to dinner. I wanted to meet his host sisters that he always talks about, so he took me up to the library on the second floor where they were so I could meet them. They were so cute!! I talked to his host mom a bit too. I let his host sisters have the mochi. :)

Then they left and I stayed to look around the library a bit. There were books of Toy Story 2 and other Disney movies I knew. I'll have to go try to read them sometime.

Outside the library was a balcony with tables overlooking Ichinomiya. It looked so pretty in the golden afternoon sun!

I took a panorama

The Ichinomiya mascot was in the garden below! I guess for the 138th anniversary?

I got SUUUUUPPERRR sunburnt today (Yuko noticed at dinner), so I bout sunscreen and aloe from Daiso (shoulda done it earlier).
Then I rode my bike home and told Miya and Yuko I was home. I took in the rest of my laundry and packed for Tokyo.
When Ken got home, he grilled meat and vegetables on the table grill, and we ate them with rice and sauce. It was good! Even though I ate a lot, Yuko and Ken thought I didn't eat much and said I must have been full!

TOKYO TOMORROW, GUYS!!!

P.S. Yesterday was the best Pi Day! 3.14.15 (the first 6 digits of pi!)