About 10,000 Japanese men clad only in loincloths braved freezing temperatures at the weekend to pack into a temple and scramble in the dark for lucky wooden talismans tossed into the crowd, in a ritual that dates back five centuries.
Men dressed in loincloths react as a priest splashes water on them before they prepare to snatch a wooden stick called"shingi" during a naked festival at Saidaiji Temple in Okayama, Okayama Prefecture Japan February 15, 2020. The person who grabs the wooden stick is considered the"luckiest man of the year". REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
The highlight of the raucous day-long ‘Hadaka Matsuri’ festival came at 10 p.m. on Saturday, when the lights went out and a priest threw bundles of twigs and two lucky sticks, each about 20-cm -long, among the participants. “Once a year, at the coldest time in February, we wrap ourselves in just a loincloth to be a man,” said 55-year-old Yasuhiko Tokuyama, the president of a regional electronics firm.Plenty of sake and beer is sold outside the temple to warm the revelers, but a purifying plunge into pools of cold water before the start of the festival was a shock to the system for most.
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