‘I look at them and wonder what on earth makes them want to get naked with other men every year. The Naked Man Festival is all about men.’ But she says this without malice, rather with the tenderness of a mother watching a toddler running happily around with a dustbin on his head. Kosaki-san looks intently at his feet.
I realise that I’ve probably crossed the line of formality and I’m in danger of upsetting my hosts and the rules of Japanese hospitality, so I take Kosaki-san up on his offer of dinner with some of his friends, bid goodnight to his lovely wife and we go out to get thoroughly, uproariously pissed.
The next day is the day of the festival itself. It’s a freezing-cold, sunny morning and around twenty friends gather at Kosaki-san’s house. I am feeling extremely anxious, but Kosaki-san is like a kid at Christmas, running around welcoming everyone and handing out cups of water. He hands me one and I take a large swig. I nearly spit it straight out: it’s not water, it’s sake. It’s only 10am, for Christ’s sake.
We gather cross-legged around a long low table to consume a small meal of sushi alongside a vast ocean of alcohol. Huge bottles of sake and smaller bottles of beer are passed around the table, and everyone drinks heavily. No-one is excused: the entire purpose of the next two hours is to get comprehensively, dangerously inebriated. ‘You’ll need this,’ says Kosaki-san, ‘otherwise you won’t be able to join in.’
I tank down as much booze as I can, and watch as the men around me descend into giggling, slurring and staggering. Eventually, once we are all well pickled, Kosaki-san rouses us to get changed. The ladies withdraw and we all strip off and jump into Kosaki-san’s ridiculously small bath to purify ourselves for the coming ritual. When we emerge, we dress each other in a long thin cotton cloth that wraps unflatteringly up our bum cracks and over our genitals, before being tied around our stomachs. Kosaki-san takes great pleasure in yanking mine up to give me what I can only describe as an excruciating wedgie, just for the fun of it. Ooooh, that smarts. Basically, we’re wearing cloth G-strings that leave our flabby pink behinds poking out for all the world to see. But by now we’re too drunk to care, and there’s much cock-waving and arse-slapping before we’re all ready.
One man collapses unconscious, too drunk to continue, and we drag him back to the sushi room to brew up his beastly hangover in relative safety. We write our wishes for health and happiness on strips of cloth and tie them to a long bamboo branch that Kosaki-san has found, and then a fat permanent marker appears and we all write mobile phone numbers on our arms in case of emergencies. I, for no good reason, decide to write in huge letters on everyone’s back ‘The BBC loves Japan’. Classy.
Fired up and staggering drunk, we set off at a terrifying running pace, holding our bamboo branch aloft as we head across the city to the Shinto shrine. At the same time, ten thousand other drunk men across Nagoya set off in groups of twenty or thirty to converge on the temple, and the city looks like a scene from a zombie porn movie. As I meet more and more semi-naked strangers, we slap each other’s backs and share bottles of sake like old lost friends, and I engage in emotional conversations with people I’ve never met, discovering a deep connection with them, despite the fact that neither of us understands what the other is saying.
We arrive at the road in front of the temple and the ceremonial driveway is packed with men in the same inebriated half-naked state as us. We race along with our pole and run into the temple grounds to deposit it with the priests, nearly stabbing one of them as we throw it into the melee. We retire to the driveway to wait for the main event as tens of thousands of onlookers and umpteen TV camera crews, including my own team, head for safety onto rooftops and up trees. A voice comes over the loudspeaker warning that people are being crushed and collapsing from the stress. Kosaki-san and I have managed to get a prime position just outside the temple, and we are crammed in by hundreds of other men, buttock to sticky, sweaty buttock.
Suddenly there is a roar from afar. The Shinotoko has been released into the baying crowd, with all ten thousand men desperate to touch him. We all crush towards the noise, even though he is a kilometre away at the far end of the crowd, making his slow and painful way towards us. A great clamour breaks out from behind us as a team of men begin running with buckets of water through the crowds to douse the Shinotoko and his assailants to cool them down and reduce the danger of heat exhaustion. The water steams off the crowd as they scramble over one another, jumping on top of each other in desperation.
The epicentre of the crush comes slowly towards us as our anticipation rises, but the Shinotoko takes two more hours to get as far as the temple gates where I stand. The pressure becomes overpowering, and the mass of flesh sways and writhes, taking me along with it. I get trapped against a post, crushing my kidneys for what seems like ages until an enormously fat man yanks me free and shoves me back into the fray. I feel like I am part of a single huge, drunken, desperate fleshy beast, stinking of alcohol and filled with a toxic mixture of anxiety and anticipation.
The Shinotoko finally looms near and I am overcome by a desperate, primal urge to touch him. As I catch sight of his bloodied scalp, I lunge forward with all my might, at the same time as a surge from the men behind me. We shove through the crowd towards him, and I get within a metre when a bucket of freezing water hits me and a counter-surge from the opposite side stops me short, and I can only flail wildly at him. His guards shove him through the gates and, like a cork from a bottle, they propel him to the temple entrance where the priests and paramedics await him. He’s raced through the crowd, and a priest crowd-dives into the melee, attached to the temple by a rope of rolled-up cotton strips. He grabs the Shinotoko by the head, and the other priests yank at the end of his rope and pull the two of them into the temple to ecstatic cries and wild cheering from the crowd. It’s like a birth in reverse. Most of us are in tears at the wonderful, insane emotional outpouring of it all.
The crowd eventually stops cheering and people begin to leave, which is when I catch sight of my reflection and have a sudden moment of confused introspection, followed by a deepening sense of shame and indignity at everything I’ve done. I have been transported to a different place, felt a bizarre and unknowable connection to ten thousand strangers – but by what? By drunkenness and a primal propensity to violence as part of a baying mob? What was it all for?
I am bleeding from scratches all over my torso, I have bruises on my arms and legs, and my feet are bare and ragged. I’m shivering from cold and exhaustion and I’ve lost Kosaki-san and all of my new friends. After taking a moment to catch my breath, I head off in the direction of my host’s house. It takes another hour for me to find my way there, and I walk in, desperate to get back into my clothes and go to a hotel. But I enter to a roar of welcome from my fellow Naked Men and their families.
A cascade of joy courses through me as they cheer me in, and they then help bathe and dress me with an extraordinary tenderness. I have never in my life felt so in need of this care and attention. They get me warm and safe, and then we sit down to share our experiences of the festival over a feast of the finest sushi and sake.
Kosaki-san assures me that getting close to the Shinotoko was enough: bad luck and guilt is transferred by my touching the men in front of me, and it travels like an electrical circuit to the Shinotoko. I try to believe him.
Meanwhile, back at the temple, the Shinotoko has the core of the four-tonne communal rice cake strapped to his back alongside some fireworks, then he races around the central temple and the bad luck is spiritually transferred to the cake, which is then unstrapped and buried in a secret location (I’m really not making any of this up), along with the bad luck and bad deeds of ten thousand men.
Back at Kosaki-san’s, we feast on his hospitality, and I experience a revelation: I have made a deep, enigmatic, unspoken, barely explainable connection to Japan by sharing this bizarre experience. We all hug and carouse in a way that I never have before. I have experienced an intimacy with Kosaki-san and his crazy friend
s that I don’t have with my closest friends. Okay, it’s had a fair amount to do with the booze, the nakedness and the shared experience, but there is also an intense and palpable sense of hope and relief that’s all packed into the bizarre cake at the centre of it all – a cake that no-one ever ate, but that ends up meaning so much.
As I drink even more sake, I luxuriate in the warmth of this new-found friendship, but I’m also aware that it will be but a memory tomorrow. I’ve had an extraordinary insight into how my Japanese friends’ minds work, but come tomorrow they will return to their formal, less-expressive selves and the strictures and responsibilities of this tight-lipped society will throw its web over all these people again. But for tonight, they are free.
Outside in the hallway, I catch sight of Mrs Kosaki touching Kosaki-san’s shoulder and giving him a light kiss on the lips. He smiles at her, then brings in more sushi.
The Abominable Trekker
JEFF GREENWALD
Jeff Greenwald is a resident of Oakland, California, and the author of several travel books, including Shopping for Buddhas and The Size of the World. He also serves as Executive Director of Ethical Traveler (www.ethicaltraveler.org), a global alliance of politically active travellers. Jeff’s latest book, Snake Lake, was published in 2010.
The Arun Valley, slicing through eastern Nepal, is the world’s deepest river gorge. Back in the 1980s, not many travellers bothered with that remote and undeveloped place. Trekking in Nepal was all about Everest, Annapurna and the Langtang Himal: places where the mountains had celebrity status, and a hungry hiker could find a good buckwheat pancake.
In the spring of 1984, I was living in Kathmandu on a Rotary fellowship. Having learned a bit of Nepali, and eager to test my mettle, I flew from Kathmandu to Tumlingtar, where our twin-engine plane shimmied to a stop on the grassy runway. From there I set off north, on foot, intent on tracing the Arun along the length of its gorge – all the way to the Tibetan border.
This was in April, and it had been a wet winter. Conditions could change in an instant, and my backpack was heavy with gear. After a few hours alone on the muddy, slippery trail, I realised I needed help.
Stopping in a wayside town, I was able to hire a porter: a friendly teenager named Norbu, which in Tibetan means ‘wish-fulfilling gem’. Norbu was a Sherpa Spiderman: fleet of foot and incredibly fit. He shouldered my huge pack with ease, and we set off together towards the mountain snows.
The trail became drier, higher, and more beautiful, carpeted with brilliant red rhododendron petals. Norbu and I trekked up ridges and down verdant valleys, sharing tales. One brilliant morning, over breakfast, he shyly expressed a wish to visit a nearby village called Bala. His grandparents were the headman and headwoman of the hamlet. He hadn’t seen them for several years. It would delight them, Norbu said, if we stopped in for a night.
I readily agreed, with one caveat: we couldn’t allow ourselves to be a burden. Eastern Nepal has scant resources, and the long winter was just ending. Food would be scarce. We’d brought rations of noodles and dried meat, and would cook for ourselves.
‘But they’ll insist,’ Norbu replied. ‘You’ll be an honoured guest, the first American to visit the village.’
‘Well … Please make sure they don’t overdo it.’
We arrived mid-afternoon. Bala was an oasis of tidy, mud-walled homes, nestled between terraced hills. Corn and chilli peppers hung from rafters. As predicted, Norbu was greeted like a returning moonwalker. I was the exotic alien he’d brought home. Kids ran over to stare at my nose, tug my beard, and pinch the strange fabric of my high-end expedition parka.
Despite my earnest and sincere protests, Norbu’s grandparents – a wizened couple who lived in Bala’s biggest house – insisted on preparing dinner. Norbu suggested, diplomatically, that I stay out of their way.
Supplied with a flask of the local millet rakshi, I climbed a nearby hill and watched the sun fall behind the foothills. The more I drank, the better I felt; soon I was feeling very good indeed. It was incredible that I should find myself in this remote Himalayan village, a guest of honour among the local tribespeople. Sometimes, on rare occasions, a traveller feels this way: that your entire life has conspired to bring you to this moment.
Time passed. I finished the rakshi. As the last rays of light scraped the clouds and faded from the sky, I heard the rhythmic ringing of a cowbell: the signal that dinner was ready. I picked my way down the hillside, followed a narrow lane between stone walls, and found the house.
There was no electricity. The large single room of Norbu’s grandparents’ home was illuminated with yak-butter lamps. Villagers filled the low wooden benches placed along the mud-plastered walls. In the centre of the swept dirt floor, facing the open-pit kitchen, was a single wooden chair, cushioned with a hand-loomed carpet: my place of honour.
I sat down, and the room fell silent. Norbu’s grandmother, wearing her finest Tibetan chuba, turned from the hearth and approached me. She carried a large copper tray, a traditional Nepali wedding gift. Upon the tray was a mountain of rice, served with fragrant lentil stew. She’d prepared a side dish of tarkari – boiled greens and potatoes – as well as a small bowl of spicy achaar pickle. I detected hints of cumin and timur, the tongue-numbing Sichuan pepper. Atop this already bountiful offering was a fried egg, a rare treat in these subsistence villages. But my heart nearly broke when I saw the crowning touch: a drumstick and thigh. The family had killed and roasted one of their few, precious chickens in our honour.
With great ceremony, Norbu’s grandmother set the heavy tray on my lap. All eyes were upon me. I looked around, giddy from the rakshi and the altitude. A hundred thoughts raced through my head: self-consciousness, fascination, a childlike astonishment.
Norbu, seated beside his grandfather, grinned at me. I grinned back. My head felt large and warm. What a place to be. And what were my friends in California up to right now? Eating breakfast? Sleeping? Watching Hill Street Blues? That world seemed so far away … Distracted, without thinking, I crossed my legs.
The copper tray overturned, and crashed to the dirt floor.
For an infinite moment, time stood still. The room was a tableau of shocked faces – none more shocked than my own. Had this unspeakable thing actually happened? Had my entire life conspired to bring me to this moment? I leaped to my feet, incredulous, overcome with shame. ‘Naraamro!’ I cried, staring down at the steaming mess. ‘Maaph garnus! This is terrible! I’m sorry!’
Norbu’s grandfather stood up calmly, and walked towards me. He placed a firm hand on my shoulder, and turned towards his stunned guests. ‘Ramro chaa,’ he stated calmly. ‘It’s fine. It’s good. In fact … it’s wonderful. Isn’t it?’ He scanned the room. ‘Isn’t it?’ Tentatively, heads nodded. The guests began to breathe again.
Suddenly, I understood. Here I was: a fabulously wealthy Westerner, an emissary from the most powerful country on earth. I had blundered into Bala, and been greeted with reverence – even awe. But in truth I was merely a pale-faced kuhire: a foreign klutz who couldn’t hold his rakshi.
The Joan Osborne song echoed in my ears:
What if God was one of us / Just a slob like one of us …
With my oafish faux pas, I’d shattered the mystique. We were all equals now – no matter how much my Gore-Tex parka had cost.
I left the house, and found Norbu. ‘What should I do? Do we leave now?’
‘Are you crazy? Don’t even think of leaving. Go to your tent,’ he commanded. ‘And wait. They’re going to do it all over again.’
And they did – with one enormous difference. This time, we all ate together.
Italy in Seventeen Courses
LAURA FRASER
Laura Fraser is a San Francisco–based writer whose latest book, a travel memoir, is All Over the Map. Her last book, An Italian Affair, was a New York Times bestseller and translated into seven languages. She frequently writes about food, travel and culture, and maintains a blog at laurafraser.com/bl
og. Her work has appeared in such publications as the New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, Afar, Salon.com, Gourmet, Tricycle, More and many others.
Aperitivi
- Stuzzichini, olives
It is August in Sardinia, where Italian vacationers sleep late, down an espresso, then take off to the beaches, packing themselves together like slippery fish in a tin. I’ve been travelling for weeks in the less-touristed interior of the island, but today, like everyone else, I am splashing around and getting abbronzata at the beach. Historically, beach property was considered so worthless that only the girls inherited the spectacular cliffs and wide expanses of sand, for Sardinians – invaded frequently and from all sides – tended to cosy into the interior.
In the evening, the beachgoers gather at bars, laughing and teasing each other as only Sards can, with increasing drunkenness and daring, until nearly dawn. I’m visiting my friend Beppe, who brings me along to meet his friends, who seem to include everyone between eighteen and forty-five from Sassari to Sorso. He introduces me to Giovanna and Giuliano, a couple in their twenties with dark curls, and tells me they are getting married on Saturday. They kiss me on the cheeks and ask where I’m from. I say San Francisco, where Beppe is currently living, where friends called me in a panic several years ago because they needed someone to come speak Italian to this guy who had arrived to stay on their couch and cook spaghetti with seafood. Beppe explains that we became friends even though I am the most napoletana American he’s ever met, by which he means conniving and ball-busting, but which I explain is because I make such good pizza.
Giovanna and Giuliano invite me to their wedding.
I’m startled. At home in the United States, people agonise over the guest list, counting every head at $120, cutting cousins and former colleagues, wondering who will be insulted and who will send a present anyway. They meet weeks in advance with caterers who will dole out four ounces of salmon for every guest, next to three baby rosemary potatoes, a dollop of spinach and one white roll. There is no inviting strangers to a wedding at the last minute. Brides, pocket-conscious parents, wedding planners, placecard-letterers – everyone would freak out.
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