The Roving Ronin Report

It snowed January 14 which is a national holiday for those coming of age. I often go to shrines and temples to take pics of kimono-clad girls but there was hardly any to be seen today due to the heavy amount of snow by Tokyo standards. I went to Zojo-ji Temple in Hamamatsucho just evening was falling. I arrived as they were ringing the evening bell and doing their evening service. It was quite an enchanting and eerie experience to be almost alone in such a populous city with Buddhist monks chanting in the background as the snow fell from the empty skies. Hooded Winter Coat (Google Affiliate Ad)

Hokkaido’s Drift Ice: Nature’s Masterpiece In northern Japan, one can commune with nature and hungry sea gulls Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido offers winter-loving visitors not only incredible man-made structures of ice and snow — the most notably being at Sapporo’s internationally renowned Yuki Matsuri – but along the northern coast one can see nature’s own winter masterpiece in the form of drift ice. From mid-January to mid-April, the Sea of Okhotsk is choked with ice fragments drifting their way south to oblivion in warmer climates. The Hokkaido coast is the southernmost area in the Northern Hemisphere to experience drift ice. In ages past, drift ice would be a thing to be avoided at all cost by sea-farers. Though not as dangerous as icebergs, drift ice could catch unlucky vessels in its clutches and hold them for long stretches of time, sometimes till death took the crew. Nowadays, with the aid of modern ice-breaking ships, drift ice has become a tourist attraction. In the nort...

Japanese Phallic Festival - Bonden Matsuri Sexual Innuendo Festiva l Festivals participants struggle uphill to deliver a gift, a decorative Bonden pole, to the god of a local shrine in return for a bountiful harvest At first glance, Yokote's Bondon Matsuri in Northern Japan may seem rather innocuous. Tall decorative pools are paraded through the streets where later they are taken up a mountain and offered to a Shrine for the sake of a good harvest. Bonden Poles with topped with decorations Anpan Man: hero to children and bread everywhere However, if one probes a little deeper they will discover that the 4-meter tall Bonden poles are actually suppose to represent the penis and only men can participate in carrying it up the mountain. When the Bondon poles are brought to the shrine on the mountain, the whole phallic symbolism becomes very clear.  A Bonden Pole is thrust through the Shrine's Gates Men lower their Bonden poles to a horizontal position before vigorously "enterin...