this is an image of the festival shortly after WWII that i thought was pretty cool. so, all said and done, i came, i drank, i got naked, i screamed with friends and thousands of japanese men, i feared for my life, i got elbowed in the head and fell off the temple stairs (which were made of stone), i was able to grab the top of one of the shingi sticks for 2 seconds before getting punched in the chest and thrust out of the mob, and this all preceded an all-night JET party at god-knows where...whew. a good time? i don't know. a good experience? definately. just a dream? quite possibly... 

i'm not kidding when i said my feet got crushed 

and then the madness began...it was as bad, and terrifying as it looks...a mob of one swaying back and forth, feet being crushed under thousands of bodies, and neck and lungs being squeezed hard enough to induce panic and fear of suffocation...given my degree of claustrophobia, i think if i was any shorter, i would have wigged out in there. when talking to my BOE about the events, and showing them pictures, one of my co-workers kept saying, jigoku, jigoku. when i found the word in my dictionary i smiled and answered, naru hodo. jigoku means hell.

this image is one of the last before spills had to put the disposable camera down his fundoshi in order to protect his lungs. we had been screaming washoi, washoi, washoi !!!!!! during our laps around the temple (a festival chant) and once inside the noise became deafening. at this point i'm gazing around at the mosh-pit like scene...i had no idea that within minutes the crowd would close in and my claustrophobic nightmares would be realized. note the steam starting to escape from the mass of bodies...if you look carefully you can see drops of water flying down from heights of the temple... 

and then 3 laps around and through the temple. this meant through thousands of spectators, a large pool of water on the temple grounds, past a shrine (for a brief prayer) and up onto the temple platform itself. i forgot my contacts, so i did this all blind, with these crazy gaijins at the reigns. i blame the length of my fundoshi on my lack of vision (and abundace of beer and sake)...what the hell?! 

this is a pretty apt comparison to my vision handicap... 

beforehand, we had to find nihonjin to tie the god-awful fundoshi (our only clothing) as it's a complicated, wedgie-delivering, ball-breaking process... 

okay, here's the deal...this year drew 6,000 men to the festival. apparantly, back in the late 700's, a shingon sect of monks held a 14-day prayer for a bountiful farm-season. batons were given out to town elders to guarantee a good season. as the years passed, so too did the desire for these lucky sticks (shingi). soon the competition was so fierce for them that men were ripping the clothes off one another to get the precious shingi; thus the naked festival was born and took modern-day form sometime in the 19th century. pics were tough, but above you can see us squeezed into the saidai-ji temple waiting for midnight and the release of the shingi... 

...yours truly and a smitty from the UK. 

...stir-doctor and a gracious host, bill... 

the yamaguchi crew included these two coke (cola) heads,  

these images come to you from the hadaka matsuri (naked festival): the best and worst thing i've ever done. 

a look inside. we were bummed that we couldn't get the book published in color, but i've found my excitement over the finished copy to outweight any dissappointment i may have been harboring. here we see a pic of my dog, ivy at pueblo mountain park, and it's map on left. the book has pics of friends, my parents, and a couple of this dashing golden. i can't tell you how excited i am. for anyone who is reading this, i apologize now for the shameless sales pitch coming in the next month, month and a half. cheers to steve johnson, my friend and co-author for making this happen! 

and now for the biggest news of the last month! after two years of hiking and writing, the book is officially done and printed! yesterday i received an advanced copy in the mail. come april, the book will be ready for the public and in stores. i'm heading home in may for some promotional work and now that i can hold the think in my hands, i'm chomping at the bit. 

superbowl...tuesday? thats right, with a slight delay in action i managed to throw a small superbowl party on the tuesday after the game. we had gross pizza, some good tofu, a total of 6 beers (it was tuesday!), and a lot of chips and brownies. the crowd included brits, kiwis and koreans, so there was a lot of rule explanation, good-humored america bashing and some sleeping and knitting...not exactly like superbowl sunday in america, but a good time had by all (except cho rong's brother, the korean with very little english ability; if he wasn't smoking cigarettes in my bathroom he was sleeping through the game).

some good engrish on the train 

and finally, after 6 months, i made it back on the ice. i'm playing with the yamaguchi-ken team and we had a tournament in hiroshima last weekend (both the rink i practice on and this rink in hiroshima are converted swimming pools). it was great fun and full-contact which i haven't dealt with since high school. we took 4th place, nevermind that there were only 8 teams involved. and, in our defense, in an attempt to promote some excitement for the sport down south, the tourny comish that it would be a fun idea to invite the 3rd best semi-pro team in all of japan to the event; they destroyed everyone. 

pauline and tom accompanied me to the store, and we thought its discovery should be rewarded with a trip to a kickass ramen place 

a recent development in my life has been the discovery of hockey in my ken. i had all my gear sent over and found the closest hockey store to me (about 3 hours) in fukuoka. for the boys back home, thats a zbubble that i bought, same one you have, pete, but here it costs ni-man yen, or $170.00!!!!!!!!! yikes 

i found my best defense was to pick the kids up and use them as shields; nonetheless, i pulled beans out of pockets and other, ahem, nether regions for the rest of the day. it's also tradition to eat a certain amount of beans corresponding to your age...you can see the kid on the left lifting up a bean for me to eat. after they had their fill of pelting me for about 25 minutes, the kids used their grubby little hands to pick beans up off the floor and feed them to me... 

before you know it, they had strapped a devil mask on me and all the kids started chasing me around the room, throwing the beans at me screaming "out with the devil!" in japanese 

well, it has been awhile. let's see, i'll start again with setsubun. this is a festival that marks the parting of seasons; out with winter and in with spring. it's also a time to ward off evil spirits, but we'll get to that soon... 

i thought we were making paper hats, but it turned out we were making holding devices for the amo...roasted soy beans.