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Via The Cellar Image of the Day, here’s a gallery of photos (warning, giant penis statues ahead, your work safeness may vary) and a video from Kanamara Matsuri, the annual Festival of the Steel Phallus. From Wikipedia:

The Kanamara Matsuri (Festival of the Steel Phallus) is an annual Shinto fertility festival held in Kawasaki, Japan in spring. The exact dates vary, but the main festivities fall on a Sunday. The penis forms the central theme of the event that’s reflected everywhere; in illustrations, candy, carved vegetables, decoration, a parade of mikoshis, etc. etc.

The Kanamara Matsuri is centered around a local penis-venerating shrine, once popular among prostitutes who wished to pray for protection against sexually transmitted diseases. Today, the festival is used to raise money for HIV research.

Hilarious. When’s the Festival of the Iron Vagina? Here’s another 142 photos on Flickr–that one comes courtesy of sachama.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 6th, 2006 at 9:50 pm and is filed under Sex, Travel. Tag Testing Project: No Tags. Photo by . You can skip to the end and leave a response, or trackback from your own site. If you don't see your comment within a day or so, drop me an email. Sometimes my comment spam filter gets overly zealous.