Last Day in Japan

In Spring 2010, Bill and I spent one week in Japan visiting his high school friend Mike, who was studying Asian languages and literature. With minimal planning and no idea what to expect, we basically relied on Mike to show us around Japan. The week was packed with Kamakura's beautiful shrines and temples, Tokyo's bustling city and DisneySea theme park, and Yokohama's Raumen Museum. Our last day in Japan, we did the only thing we had planned prior to our arrival. We went to Kawasaki for the annual Shinto fertility celebration: the Kanamara Matsuri, or “Festival of the Steel Phallus.” We were supposed to be flying back to America that evening, so we packed up our bags, locked them in a safe at a train station, and headed to the festival for one last sight-seeing event.

As Mike led us into Kawasaki, we were greeted by cherry blossom trees lined with posters of dick illustrations. A guy at the entrance held a huge bronze penis on his crotch. Tons of penis whistles, key chains, and statues were being sold. Most of the food was phallic shaped: colorful penis lollipops, sausages, and various fried foods on a stick. Older, distinguished-looking men in traditional Japanese clothing sat on the ground carving vegetables into sculptures of male genitalia.  Then the real celebration began: an enormous crowd gathered to parade two penis mikoshi (portable shrines) down the streets of the city, accompanied by traditional Japanese drums. The first mikoshi was gigantic, bright pink, and was carried by drag queens in matching pink outfits. Shortly behind it was the official, 100-year-old, meter-high iron penis shrine. The best, or maybe the worst part, of the whole thing is that the entire event took place on the grounds of a kindergarten school.

I thought I'd seen a crowd when I was in Shibuya (the Japanese equivalent of our Times Square), but nothing quite compared to the Festival of the Steel Phallus.  And that's where Bill and I were when I made a horrible mistake.  In the midst of one of the most chaotic crowds I've ever seen, in a country whose language I don't speak, with my luggage locked up in an unknown train station, and with a plane to catch to America that evening, I lost Mike. It is at that point that Bill and I realized that both of our cell phones were locked up in our luggage, and none of us had thought to come up with a meeting spot should we get separated. We waded through the penis enthusiasts, and past the penis foods, the penis shrines, the penis vegetables, and the penis whistles. Mike was nowhere. To say we were panicked would be a drastic understatement. It was the longest half hour we spent in Japan. Eventually, we made our way to the nearest train station to cross our fingers and hope for a miracle and/or to cry. We didn't know how to get back to our luggage, to Mike's apartment, or to the airport. Nobody around us spoke English, and we were running out of time.  Then, when all hope seemed lost, Bill yelled out, “There's Mike!” No two words have ever sounded so sweet.  Thankfully, the rest of the day was uneventful, and a few hours later we were homeward bound.