Naked Men Festival Video

This is a video of the men making the journey from the temple to the river.

Naked Men Festival

On Saturday night, Dec. 9, we went with Matt and Chelsea to the Naked Men Festival at the Nagara River down the street from our apartment! We had the best time! This festival is a Shinto ritual which has been practiced for 600 years. About 100 men dressed in white loincloths and headbands walk down the street with 1 man who wears a red loincloth and headband, who is sometimes tossed into the air. The man in red is chosen for the fact that his family has donated the most money to the shrine for the year. They begin at the shrine and then walk down the street huddling together and chanting.

After walking down the street, they run into the freezing Nagara River to purify themselves and pray for their wishes to be fulfilled. The temperature outside was in the low forties, which is a lot warmer than a typical December night. This festival is actually called the Ikenoue Misogi Matsuri.“Misogi” means to purify oneself with sea or river water in order to wash away sins and impurities. We ended the festival by eating at some of the street vendors set up along the street. They sold french fries, corn dogs, candied apples, as well as many "fishy" Japanese foods!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We tried to make the best of Thanksgiving while here in Japan. We had dinner at Steve and Zelie's apartment, along with Matt, Chelsea, Yuka, Taca, and Yurie (we work with Yuka and Yurie and have become good friends with them!) We tried our best to have a "traditional" meal, but with no oven and only one international food store, our resources were limited!

We all contributed to the feast, which was fried chicken, pork, potato soup, sweet potato casserole (made in the toaster oven), cranberry sauce, stuffing, green beans, corn, potato salad, pumpkin pie, and rolls. Everything turned out really good! We will always remember eating Thanksgiving dinner on the floor using chopsticks!

Drum Performance Video

This is a video of a drum performance we saw at the Gifu Festival.

Tanigumi City

On November 18, we were invited to go to lunch with our Japanese teacher (yes...we're taking Japanese lessons!), Steve, Zelie, and 2 other Japanese women. They drove us about 45 minutes away from Gifu City to Tanigumi City. We ate at a really nice restaurant in the countryside that overlooked the city. The restaurant had all glass windows and only sat 10 people at a bar that faced the cook and the windows. Our teacher is the woman next to Frank. Her name is Mami and she comes to our apartment every Wednesday for a 1 hour lesson. She teaches us basic Japanese, like how to say greetings and order at a restaurant. We really enjoy it!



Outside the restaurant, there were miles and miles of green tea fields.

After lunch we drove to visit the Kegonji Temple. This is a picture of us at the temple entrance.

Once we entered, we had to climb a ton of stairs to get to the actual temple where the worshiping takes place. At the top of the stairs, there were several Buddha statues and lots of incense. One picture below is of Melissa putting smoke on her hands. This belief is to waft the smoke over your ailing body part. We also were able to go into a tunnel of enlightenment. This is common at many of the larger temples. First, you pay about a dollar to go into a very narrow, pitch black cave underground. Then you walk single file, while touching the walls to find a key hole. If you find and touch the key hole, then it will bring you good luck. It was kind of creepy down there, but we were able to find it after about 5 minutes...a guy behind us brought out his lighter, so I guess we cheated!


We then went up even more stairs to see about 25 tanuki (raccoon-dog) statues. See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil...tanukis!

The fall leaves were beautiful!