Penis and Vagina Festivals
If Hello Kitty isn’t a good enough reason to move to Japan, Penis and Vagina Festivals definitely are. Dating back some 1,500 years, these events are held to ensure a good harvest and promote reproduction. The festivals provide an economic boom to host cities as well as generating general genital merriment (say that 3 times fast).
One of the best-known penis festivals is at Komaki City’s Tagata shrine (AKA The Penis Shrine). This festival is held annually on March 15. The festivities feature the parading of a two-foot by six-and-a-half foot long phallus carved from Japanese cypress.
In a neighboring village, a vagina festival is held the Sunday prior to Komaki’s Penis Festival. During this event, children carry a small vagina to the local shrine while some 40 grown carry a massive vagina to the shrine in the main parade followed by two smaller vaginal troupes. Vendors sell penis and vagina-shaped candies, chocolate-covered bananas, wooden penis sculptures and penis earring.
One regular attendee sadly noted that the approaching celebratory phallus was,”smaller than last year’s“. (And that is, indeed, what she said.)
Testicles: The Other White Meat
A lot of international cuisine can make the American stomach turn, but perhaps none so much as the art of cooking testicles. The Testicle Olympiad began in 2005 and has since been held annually as the world’s premiere “festival of testicle-cooking”, held in the Serbian region of Šumadija.
During the festival, teams compete for best tasting testes and work only with pork, veal, goat and ram testicles. The festival has been such a success that the organization released a testicle cookbook as a result, which boasts recipes for all kinds of testicle-based dishes: pizza and goulash; barbecued and stewed; cooked with wine; with bourguignonne sauce; in an omelet; with béchamel sauce.
The general belief is that testosterone-rich testicles are a powerful aphrodisiac, which naturally prompts many men bring their wives to the big eating event. The Šumadija’s Testicle Olympiad is not the only festival for this ‘gourmet cuisine’. The US began hosting such events in the 1950s, like The Rocky Mountain Oyster Feed in Idaho. (Any state that claims ‘I-da-ho’ would naturally host an event celebrating testicles; regardless, the term ‘testicle festival’ is pretty catchy).
