There is a festival in Japan called the penis festival (also known as Kanamara Matsuri as called by the Japanese). The human penis is revered and celebrated in this festival by having giant-sized replicas of the human penis paraded around the city.
There are also various types of penis-shaped objects displayed in the public during the festival, such as vegetables and wood pieces carved to the shape of human penis. People also suck on candies shaped as human penises in the festival. In short, the whole city would be filled with penis-shaped objects during the festival.
What an interesting festival this is....
To be more exact, the festival is held in the Kanayama Shrine in the city of Kawasaki, Japan.
The legend which allegedly led to this festival goes like this; a jealous sharp-toothed demon hid inside the vagina of a young woman the demon fell in love with and bit off penises of two young men on their wedding nights. After that the woman sought help from a blacksmith, who fashioned an iron phallus to break the demon's teeth, which led to the enshrinement of the item (source from Wikipedia).
The Kanayama Shrine was popular among prostitutes who wished to pray for protection from sexually transmitted infections. (source from Wikipedia).
The exact date of the festival varies, the main festivities takes place on the first Sunday in April (source from Wikipedia).
There's even a radish carving contest where radishes would be carved to look like penises by the contestants, the winner would be the one who carved his/her radish as closely to the anatomically-correct penis-shape as possible, I suppose.
Below is a picture of a person in Batman costume who parades around with his erect penis in the festival (his penis seems to be have some sort of covering on it, so its not exactly exposed).
Do go to this festival and take part in its activities if you happen to visit Japan somewhere in April. Enjoy Japan!!
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