A brief summary by the Okayama website:
"This festival, having a tradition of approximately 500 years, is one of the three rarest festivals in Japan. Thousands of men wearing nothing but loincloths struggle for two holy sticks. Significant intangible folk cultural asset designated by Okayama Prefecture."
As you will see the loincloths do not cover the 9,000 butts surrounding you during the festival, which is of course the first thing you notice as you walk towards the festival....
Also, it is very cold! It is the middle of February, and only a week before the whole prefecture had been covered in snow, not the ideal weather for running about in your underwear.
Not only is it freezing, but as part of the tradition the men have cold water thrown onto them.
The whole event was incredibly popular, with seating being entirely sold out. With the festival bringing such a huge turnout, there was inevitably an incredible amount of stalls selling all sorts of delicious Japanese food.
After a suitable amount of food hunting we returned to our spot to watch the events unfold.
Soon the men stopped jogging around and began to squish into this (below) building. What you cannot see from the picture is the sheer amount of bodies inside. Those on the outside had to hold and push those on the inside to prevent them from falling. There were, of course, more than a few casualties, every so often one person would fall, causing an incredible domino effect. Paramedics would remove the hurt, and other runners would rush to take his place.
Eventually the two sticks were thrown into the crowd of virtually naked men, whoever caught the sticks proceeded to run, soon to be lost in a sea of flesh. The others all chase after him, because it is believed if they can spot the stick, (or the man in possession of it), or even better touch the guy, then it will bring good luck to their future, and these naked men are willing to fight and push for the right to touch the stick bearer. Anyway it gets slightly violent, but the organisers proudly announced that no one has died in recent years.
Sadly I have no pictures of when they started to chase the stick, I ran my battery down too soon taking pictures of all the bums right at the beginning :(
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