Love Fests, Penis Parades, & The Sex Myths Behind Them

That's a better couple to aspire too. I mean some way, so I think in some ways right, comedically maybe not murderously right, maybe not dietaryly right. Um, let's see what are what would we call that? It would you have to be like folk? What the folk? What the folk? That's it? Eli and Diana? What the folk? That's it? That's brilliant folk folk tunes? We don't have a good time. I don't know, we don't have to go too far with it. I think Eli and Diana what the folk?

That's our that's our little positive like more than one hundred percent that there's already what the folk album out there? Who cares? There's probably ten. I'm positive on this record's going platinum, So get ready Grammys, Granny's everywhere. Wait did you say Granny's That's what I thought you said. I said Grammys. Oh my bad. I thought you were like, we're making mere grand sights I'm setting are award winning platinum album. The sites you're setting are hope the Grandma's

like us. Well, I'm excited. Hey everybody, by the way, I'm Eli. I'm Diana. Welcome to the show. If he didn't know that already, sorry, Yeah for everything you just heard. What the folk? Who the folk? Are? These idiots? Well kind of show is this? We don't know. We're still figuring it out, is true? That was actually a good segue though, because we're talking about folk tales today, we are talking about folk You here is very deliberate. That's right.

Dago Bay Day footie sheet everyone, which is Romanian for happy dragobeat, dragon beat, dragobat day, Happy drab Dragobte. I love it. Look whenever you're listening to this, it's probably around February twenty fourth, which is the traditional Romanian holiday Dragobete, the holiday for love. So with this popped up on the national holiday calendar that I sometimes check, and it sent me on a whole search for other love holidays

around the world. And you know, we've touched on a few of those in episodes in the past, I think, but the ones we found today and the folk tales surrounding them just suddenly just became their own episode in their own right right. Some of these are the most ridiculous and certainly some of the most phallic holidays on the globe. So today we're gonna learn about Dragobette and

the folk tale that inspired it. And then we're gonna learn about Japan's Kanamara Matsuri and not just the mythology that inspired that holiday, but the larger, very romantic mythology of gods and goddesses and the creation of the world that led to that holiday as well. So I say we jump in all these these bon er festivals. Let's go to the bone though, Hey their French, come listen. Well, Elia and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no

matchmaking or romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships. A lover might be any type of person at all, an abstract concert, a concrete wall. But if there's a story where the second clans, we show ridiculous romance, a production of iHeartRadio. All right, So drago Bette, this is named for the Romanian patron saint of love and cheerfulness, and he's sort of like a non god parallel to Cupid or arrows if you're more familiar with you know, Greek

and Roman mythology. But as Rolandia dot Eu tells us, he was unlike those two and that he didn't like pop up in your life and intervene in your romantic situation. He didn't. He didn't like shoot love arrows at you and make you fall in love with someone you didn't like. He's not swinging around the dust of broken hearts, nothing like that, none of that creepy stuff. But does he wear a diaper? That's the real question. He's very old, so by this point maybe human life truly can be

a circle. True. In fact, Dragobette only used his powers quote to always remind people to never stop celebrating love. She's a very unproblematic Cupid. I really like this message he's got. Yeah, yeah, it seems wholesome. Yeah, definitely. Well. Dragobette's mother was Baba Dokia, an old woman who is associated with the arrival of spring in Romanian mythology. So she has a bunch of sheep and every year when spring comes, she walks them up to the Pucigi Mountains

to grades. And that's how you know it's springtime. Oh yeah, old ladies walking up the mountain must be time to plant the crops. Yeah. So the story goes that Dragabette met a girl and they fell in love so hard with each other that they got married on the spot. She didn't want any long engagement, right, or any engagement at all. Skip that part. Will you marry me? I don't know how much time you got. So after their little speed wedding, they went and told Boba Dookia, who

was furious. Oh no, which I mean, if your own mother is not invited to your wedding unless she sucks, I think she would probably be mad about that. So Boba Dookia had you know, she's got her bunch of sheep right, So she sheered off some black wool and she told her new daughter in law, Okay, fine, you want to be in my family. It's a sheep family. You gotta go wash this bowl until it turns white or so help me, I'm gonna shear your hair and wash it till it changes color. Oh no, she said,

would you come back until it's done. I I just thought I needed that. Well this girl, she's like, all right, okay, I can prove something to my mother in law. Very it's given me like Princess and the pea vibes right, give me an impossible task. I got it. I got it. So she goes to the river. Now keep in mind it is February in Romania. The water is freezing, and she takes this black wall and she starts scrubbing it in the water. But it just won't change color because

it's not black because it's dirty. It's black because the sheep was water exactly. It's not gunning. So her hands are like bleeding. After a while, she's scrubbing so hard, and then suddenly this mysterious man shows up out of the forest and he says, hey, girl, I hate to see a struggle bus there. You know I'm gonna help you out. Here is a magic red flower. You put that in the water and your wold will turn white.

She's like, look, I know to trust a matt stranger in the forest when I eat one, So sure, especially when he has a very white kind of voice. So she takes him up on this offer. She puts the flower in the water and loan the whole bang bang boom. He was right, it turns white. Also, I'll pause here to say that in the original mythology, from what I could find, this guy was also like a representative of the coming of spring. He was like a personification in

that pathology. But as the myth was christianized later on, that guy was suddenly Jesus. In later versions of the story, they're just like, let's just recast him as Jesus and good to go. Yeah, magic flowers. Sure, that sounds like something Jesus would do. That's so I love. Sometimes it's so obvious. They're so lazy. You know, we need to assimilate these people into our own cultures. So I don't know, take that old folk tale and make Jesus one of

the characters out of nowhere, and that'll do it. One of my favorites was Study Abroad. Alert On my study Abroad when I went to Italy, you haven't heard. We were walking around Rome and they're you know, they're they're giving us the tour. They're telling us about everything. And you see in the middle of this square an obelisk that they had taken from Egypt the Romans, right, and they didn't know what it meant. They just wanted it, and they brought it back to Rome and they stuck

it in the middle of the square. They put all their pagan gods around it, and they were like, now it's ours. Now it's a Roman religious artifact. And then hundreds of years later, when the Christians converted everything, they just put a big brass cross on top of it. So you've got this Egyptian obelisk that's like meant for Egyptian religion, and then it's surrounded with Roman pagan gods, and then it's got a Christian cross on top, and

it's just the most ridiculously I love it. And Okay, So the girl has her white wool and she goes running back out of the forest and to find Boba Dookia. She's like, hey, mom, check it. Thanks, I got your white wall here. So glad to be part of the family. Yes, And Bobadokia, of course is furious because she set this whole thing up to not work deliberately. But before she can even start yelling at the girl, she notices the red flower that the mysterious man had given her and

it's pinned to her shirt. She sees this flowers. She's like, oh my god, it's spring. The flowers are blooming out. Shit, I'm late. I gotta get my sheep up this mountain. And she gets twelve coats and all her sheep and she starts hiking up the mountain. And as she goes up, it's getting warmer and warmer. She takes one coat off every day. But when she gets the top, she realizes it's actually not spring yet. She jumped the gun and an icy wind comes through and it freezes Boba Dookia

and all of her sheep all. And there's these rock formations in the Bouchese mountains now that you can go up and see. And they say that's Boba Dookia and her sheep. Man kind of a drive by on the sheep. Yeah, do not feel like they didn't do anything. Boba Dookia. Sure, her pride got the best of her. Yea sheep coming there. Yeah, the sheep or just innocent bystanders, innocent bostanders. I'm so

glad you're here. That's his partnership work. That's the only joke I have is converting b words to bob for sheep also works for goats, very appropriate for this particular story. It might be weird later, but no, this is the peak of comedy for me. It's as good as it gets. And Eli banks world, he say, we can all do it. Okay.

So that's the story of Barbadochia and her sheep. And so the traditional celebration of Dragobette would be in late February, and it's just full of parties, and often people would schedule their marriages of course, you know, romantic time. Sure, during the festival, young men and women would wander in the forest together and the men would go searching for strap ry flowers which they would use to make these little bouquets, and they would dip them into a river

for luck. Oh, just like the girl had the red flower from Jesus or whatever. Yeah, And then at noon, all the women go running back into the village and the men are go, you know, they go running after the women that they like. And if he caught her and she liked him back, she would kiss him publicly.

And in old traditions this was like an engagement announcement, because you don't kiss anybody you're not tending to take right to bed right, And much like Drago Bette and his girlfriend, they're like, hey, I like you, you like me, Well, let's get married as quick as possible. Let's just do the damn thing. Probably because they couldn't have sex until they did, Okay, they were like, let's just get this done. And then at night all the men and women would

hike over the hills outside of town. They would make bonfires, and they would sit around and talk until morning. Oh, which is still very wholesome. Yeah, it sounds so nice. I mean, you gotta wonder what's really happen out there. A little necking there has to be a little bit. I mean it could be a full on orgy. I don't know how things are over in Romania. Like, actually you just remove your clothes, like Baba Daria, did you just take one item off? It just turns it a

stripped for us burning man. Basically all right, any any Romanian person out there that wants to correct us, yes, please please, yes, if you have participated in dragobette, I would love to hear it. The dragobette now is kind of lumped together with Valentine's day, but it makes February sort of like, you know, a love month in Romania. But unlike Valentine's Day, Dragobette is a little more focused

on the connection. Right. They say, it's not really as much about giving roses and chocolates and love notes and stuff like that. It's about that emotional aspect. It's about respect and appreciating and spending time with your partner. Right. Um. They also say it's it's not just for couples, it's for single people as well to sort of look for love or dream of love. Although single people are not supposed to cry or complain on dragon Bette. If they do turn into a grouch, they will be cursed with

trouble and sorrow for months. Oh so that at the same time a little harsh to the single people out there. Okay, They're like, it's for you too, but like, don't bitch and mommee, you don't have nobody to kiss and the chest. Well your single think of all the potential you have in your romantic life. They're like, oh cool, Yeah. Well, it's also a tradition for women to use springtime snow to wash their faces, which is supposed to make their

skin look pure and beautiful. Makes sense, depends on the snow. I think perhaps the yellow smell. Yeah, don't use the yellow snow. I don't think you'll get the results too. Looking for um And at night, older women bake salty bread for the young women to eat, and then the young ladies would place basil under their pillow and dream of their future husband coming to them water because they're so thirsty from eating the bread. If I eat a bunch of salty, salty bread before I go to sleep,

I'm just gonna wake up with heart palpitations. Well, just say, young men and women, wow, roasted roasted like bread. Sorry, babe, love you Okay, really you're younger than men. This is not dragobette behavior. I'm when it cursed with sorrow for minutes. Um. Also, according to Rulandia dot Eu on dragobette quote, men should not annoy women otherwise their love life might fall apart. Oh no, the one day out of the year. But this sounds like a really fun day because you're also

not supposed to work or get sucked into chorch. Yeah, this is just a day to love and be loved or dream of love or I guess you have to bake some bread. Yeah, a little bread baking. That's not it. Maybe you bake that the day before so you second of it that day. But there is one thing that you can't not do on Dragobette. It's a very important Listen up, everybody, do not sacrifice any animals. Oh damn. I know you wanted to. Oh no, had a knife

to the throat of a totally innocent lamb. But it can totally mess up your love game if you do this on dragon Beette. So save it for the next day. I guess, don't kill me. It's bad luck. There he goes. All right. Well, all in all, Dragobette, very sweet holiday. I think we could all have a lot of fun celebrating. I would like to take partner on little dragon Beette here. Yeah, although probably by the time you're listening to this, we just missed it, everybody, So I guess we'll have to

wait till next year to celebrate our respective romances. But I do have one big problem with this particular love fest. There's not enough Wieners. I know you love wiener now, you know. If there's a holiday, I want it to be dick centric. Dick centric so to fix that, we are going to zip over from Romania to Japan to join them for Kanamara Matsuri, which is the Japanese Penis Festival, and this happens every year on the first Sunday in

April in Kawasaki, Japan, which is April second this year. Everybody, we got a few weeks, we can make it. We can make it. A hundred thousand people show up and take the city streets as sixty percent of which by now apparently our tourists, and for a whole day, the whole city is just full of fallusis Obviously we can get into our giggles about this. There's a lot to laugh about. Its parade of penises, taken at face value,

is pretty silly. I don't want to take it to my face noted, Yes, countless blogs and podcasting videos across the internet for the last ten years or so have definitely exaggerated the comical aspect of this festival. But it's not just dick Day for no reason. There's actually a lot of cultural history to it. It gets a little overlooked these days, probably, you know, because people are distracted

by the giant dicks. I mean, you can see why, yeah, but no. The whole festival is centered around the Kana Yama Shrine in Kawasaki, which is dedicated to the gods of mining, blacksmithing, and metal works. And those god's names are Kana Yamahiko and Kana Yamahime and like, traditionally this shrine was a place for sex workers to pray for protection from STDs. Now. I don't know about you, but the first time I heard that, I was like, Hm, why does a blacksmith have anything to do with an STD?

I feel like as a blacksmith, I'd be like, why are you associating me wards or whatever? All right, But the legend behind the reason for this coordination, I guess, brings us to this episode's next legendary are romance that inspired a modern sex festival, That of the goddess is an Ami and the god is an age, and that is going to take us way away back in time to the year. Well, actually there's not any year. We're

talking about the beginning of time here, free time. But our time machine, of course, runs on the quantum power of ads. So y'all help us out by listening, just to keep those who we travel back to the DNA creation. See there. Welcome back to the great void of nothingness. Here in the beginning, there was only chaos, just a limitless, formless,

shapeless ether. And this whole story comes from the Kojiki, which is Japan's oldest mythological chronicle, compiled in the year seven twelve by Ono Yasumorrow, and then it was written into a book by Genji Shibukawa in nineteen twenty eight. So, out of this infinite nothingness, three deities erupted from the void to create the heavens, and then over millions of years, the plane of heaven looked down upon this sort of mushy cloud of gunk that would one day be planet Earth.

But at this point, Shibikawa writes, quote, the Earth may be said to have resembled oil floating upon the face of the waters. So other gods were born at this time or created by these three deities. But while the world was this just kind of loose and bubbly mess, there really wasn't anything for them to do. So the

three creating deities summoned two additional divine beings. The goddess is an Ami and the god is a Nagi, and they told those two, Hey, you two have got to get down there and turn that dusty mess into a planet. All right, we need a world to be gods of. So they gave the couple this fancy spear covered in jewels and it said, off you go, good luck. Not a lot of instruction on how to create a planet. Okay, I guess we'll just figure it out. So's anami and is an age like? Okay, I guess to take the

spear and head home. Down there figured out, and they crossed the bridge that took them to the sloppy soup that was the Earth, and they just kind of stared at it for a minute, and he's an Aggie's like, well, maybe I can stir up this mess with the spear and that'll do something. I gotta have this thing for a reason, right, And so he dips it into the goo, and when he pulled it up, a big drip fell from the skier and splashed down to create Onogoro Island,

which is the first solid land on Earth. And the couple looked at each other's surprise, delighted. They decided this is going to be their little starter home. But they decided, you know, if we're going to move in together. We need to get married. I gotta put a ring on it. He's an aggie, right, yeah, traditional We can't just be living in sin, I know, even though there's no one here to judge, right, So is Anami is an aggie.

They built a pillar on the center of the island, and it was called the Ame no Mihashira, or the Pillar of Heaven, and then they built a big palace around it. It's gonna be there at their home, their base of operations. While they crafted the world, Isnagi, the male god, walked around this pillar to the left, while Isunami,

the goddess, walked around to the right. And when they met on the other side, Isnami said, how delightful it is to meet so handsome a youth, and Isnagi said back, how delighted I am to have fallen in love with such a lovely maiden. And that was the ritual. They were married, and they had two children. But both of these children were like oddly deformed, and they weren't considered deities. So they did what any loving parents would do. They put them on a boat and they sent them out

to see there's literally nothing out there. Yeah, right, we haven't created it yet. Bad luck. Well, so then they decide to go to their their mommy and daddy gods and say, hey, what's the deal, why can't we have babies? We got married to everything? Well, the creator gods said something we've heard across many religions. It's the woman's fault. They said, you, hey, you remember that pillar marriage you

all did. Yeah, after you crossed both sides of the pillar, is Unami spoke first, and women shouldn't speak first, so that didn't count. You're not married. Actually, that's why your babies are all weird. So many problems with that. I would say, these three gods are canceled God. Let's check out our next podcast, Canceled Gods. What the folk are we talking about? What the from the people who brought you? What the folk? It's canceled gods? All right, well, is

Nabi is Nagi? They're like, all right, fine, well redo the ceremony? Is that good? And this time when they got around the pillar, is Anagi spoke first, How delightful to meet so beautiful a maiden, and is Anami followed saying, oh thank you so much for letting me speak. Now, how great to meet such a handsome youth, et cetera, et cetera. I imagine that he said it first, and then there was kind of a very long silence, and he's like he's an abby and she's like, oh, oh am,

I allowed to say something. Wow, thank you so much. I'm so lucky to have the permission of a handsome youth like you to open my damn mouth. She looks up at the sky. Is that good? Was that long enough? A pose y'all good? Or what that good? I guess she's probably less sassy than myself. Yeah, No, she was kind of into it. She was fine with it. The story that she Bukawa wrote said that her speaking second was quote more appropriate and in accordance with the law

of nature. So I'll go ahead and cancel Genji Shibukawa here as well, nineteen twenty eight author. Well, anyway, after this fix it marriage, their fertility issues were solved, and Isanami and Isanagi started giving birth to the eight great Islands of Japan. Now that there was a solid earth and the country of islands to rule over, they started

bringing gods into the mix. So Isanami gave birth to the sea god, the god of land, the wind deity and the deity of treas, the usual gods for everything you hear about in polytheism, and those gods went on to birth gods of their own sons, begat, begat. So everything's going great until Isanami gave birth to Kagutsuchi no Kami, the deity of fire, and this little baby god was actually made of fire, and Isonami was horribly burned during

his birth. Issanagi rushed in to save her, and he managed to keep her alive, but she couldn't eat anything after all this. So Isanagi loved her so much that he spent all his time caring for her, and he tried to prepare delicious meals that she could eat, but everything she tried to swallow she immediately vomited back up. And from that vomit two other deities were formed, kana Yamahiko and Kanayama Hime, the mining and blacksmith in gods

that we mentioned earlier. Oh yeah, and eventually he's Anami couldn't go on any longer and she Diedanagi threw himself over her body and cried, quote, my dearest wife, why art thou gone to leave me thus alone? How could I ever exchange thee for even one child, come back for the sake of the world in which there still

remains so much for both us to do. He cried over her, and his tears fell down and formed another goddess, nakisawame the spirit of spring water, and he looked up and saw her, and He's like, God, my tears, I'm crying, and now I've got another child. And this made him cry harder until he was just like so overcome with anger that he stood up, walked over to the fire god. Kagatsuchi drew his sword and said, thou hateful mattress side and he swung his sword and lopped the fire Baby's

head clean off. Fiery blood spouted into the air, and as it dripped from his sword, eight more deities were born. He looked down and said, quote, what more children? I mean, I probably a sash, And then from Kagatsuchi's body another eight deities climbed out of his lifeless form. Oh my God, seriously, like you can't. You can't spit in this world without creating a baby. This sounds like some sort of like Cronenberg horror movie where it's like everything you touch a

living thing just crawls out of it. I know it sounds like a horror story for sure, and it sounds from the myth like they were kind of shocked by this too. They didn't expect every time I vomit, odds are going to pop out, terrifying. Plus, he's like, I'm a newly single dad and you want me to have sixteen more? How are many? I was trying to get rid of one and you gave me sixteen more. I know that's no although it is fucked up. He would lop his own kid's head off. Yeah, he thought his

bat he was born of fire. Yeah, so he has all these new kids, and he Easanagie did find some comfort in raising all these little god babies. But he missed his wife terribly, so he decided to go into the underworld and bring her back. And when he arrived at the Palace of the Underworld, he found her. He's an Ami threw her arms around him, and Easanagie said, quote, my darling, I have come to take you back to the world. Come back and let us complete our work

of creation. How can I do this work without you? But she told him that she had already eaten in the underworld, and once you do that, it's impossible to leave. He asked her, please find a way to come with me. So she said she would go ask the Lord of the underworld. Quote, but remember that thou must not on any account look inside the castle in the meantime. And he said, bet got it. No worries, babe, no doubt, no doubt, absolutely one percent. Hurry up, Let's get the

hell out of here. I can handle this. I'm on it, you know, I'm sit right here and not do shit. Should also say, because you're probably thinking this here, if you're familiar with the story, that this is very similar to the Greek myth of Persephone, same thing where she ate in Hades, and that's what sort of trapped her down there. A lot of myths share across the globe, and it's so interesting to me whether they came up with them independently and there's similar stories, or whether that's

from cultural sharing. I think that's so cool, Right, that would be so interesting to parse out for sure. Right, So is an ame you know, she's going off to ask the Lord of the underworld, and he's an Aggie is sitting there waiting for her, tapping his foot all right, all I have to do is not look in the castle, and she'll be back any minute. Now. This is like Diana when I go into the grocery store and leave you in the car. And he was like, oh my god, is he ever? I don't know if the line's long

or what the deal is, but this is taking forever. Well, I had a smart I have a smartphone to birth the deity that would become a smartphone, I guess. Well. He waited all day long, and as Genji Shibikawa wrote quote, probably to his impatient mind, a single heartbeat may have seemed an age. He was so nervous and worried that he decided, you know what, I'm just gonna go take a quick look see and see what's going on in there.

That's the one I know. He broke off a tooth of his comb and he lit that as a torch. He held it up and crept into the castle have a little looky loop, and to his horror he saw Anagi laying dead on the floor, not beautiful as she had been when he met her, but rotting and covered in He gasped, dropped his torch and took off running. And this woke her up. She looked around, heard his scream and said, quote, he must have seen me in this revolting state. He has put me to shame and

broken his solemn vow. I'll make him suffer for his perfidy. And she collected a bunch of her wretched little hag demons that were hebbling around her and said, we're going to go chase after this guy, and they all took off after him. Good lord, she's really changed. So's Anagi took off, running out of the underworld, his zombie wife and her demons and hot pursuit. He made it to the entrance and pushed a boulder into the mouth of

the cavern that separated the two worlds. Hes Anamie couldn't pass through, so she screamed to him that she would destroy one thousand residents of the living world every day. He's Anagi shouted back that he would give life to fifteen hundred in return. The two agreed to divorce, and eas Anami They're like, we're just not compatible, and you know that we've we've decided to go in different directions. You know, you're a rotting corpse full of maggots, and

I'm you know not that. Plus I have sixteen kids. You know, you weren't there for that. But they keep head, they keep spawning. I gotta get home. So the two agreed to divorce, and Easnami would rule the land of the dead, while Easanagi ruled the land of the living. And Easanagi went back to his home and he washed himself in spring waters, which is said to explain the purification rituals in Shintoism, where shrine goers washed themselves with

water before entering a sacred space. I can imagine getting out of that situation and really wanting to take a shower. Oh yeah, I was just in the underworld for a while. There's a lot of maggots. Okay, my dead wife's chasing me down. The other interesting thing is that that sort of argument they had where is Anami said she would kill a thousand lives a day and Zanagi said he

would then give life to fifteen hundred in return. This was the beginning of death in the world apparently, So that's sort of how you know people are gonna die, but more will be born. That was kind of where that idea came from. Interesting. Yeah, so I think it's a really fascinating tale, one of these sort of love myths that we sometimes get the opportunity to tell on this show. And I love this stuff. I was a big mythology fan in college and high school and stuff,

so this is cool to get back into. But I know y'all are itching you got blue balls for this dick festival we've been talking about. We've been teasing you about it this whole time, right, and we want to talk about how it all relates. But yes, their children, Kaneyamahico and Kaneyamahime sparked the rigid ritual that we'll be talking about. So let's take a quick break and we'll

take a ride on that story right after this. Welcome back, y'all. Okay, So we talked about the two children born of Isanami's vomit after she was burned by her fire baby. That was Kaneyamahiko and Kaneyamahime. And that as I was saying that, I was like, imagine if this was like the radio and people just tuned in at a certain point, wait birth from vomit after the fire baby, what if you're

just joining us? All right? So Kanyeamahiko and Kanyeamahime are like Isnami and Isanagi sort of that divine brother sister husband wife sort of team, and these two are celebrated as protectors of blacksmiths and sexuality. Again is a weird combo. Yeah. Now, in some versions of the story, this is because it said that Kaneyamahiko and Kanyeamahime healed Isanami's burns around her vagina after she birthed the fire baby, so they they you know, were born of her vomit. The first thing

they did. Oh my god, thanks mom for bringing us into the world. WHOA what is happening? Let me let me try and put the spire out right real quick. And so because they were so quick to act and did such a good job, they are prayed to for anyone who's seeking help with venereal diseases or their fertility or safe childbirth or even matrimonial happiness. That's according to Tofugu dot Com. But that's not the only story about why these two are associated with, you know, things having

to do with sex. There's another one that explains the background of the penis Festival a little more clearly. Once there was a jealous demon with nasty sharp teeth who fell in love with a beautiful, young human woman okay, and she just wasn't that into him for some reason. We can't imagine why, because he was a jealous demon with nasty, sharp teath. Hey, baby, don't talk to anybody else but you and me. Huh, you away from me. I'm so tired. Let me mark that here. Give me

a little sugar sweet cheeks. Girl. Who's this demon? Who? Well? Yeah, so she was like not feeling it, and the demon got but heard about it and decided that he would take up residence inside her vagina, and he swore to bite the boners off at anyone who dared enter her. Wow. I've heard of like vengeful exes, but good godiculous. This is real crazy because he's like inside her vagina. Yeah, that's personal. She you know, I'd be like, get the

fuck out. I mean, there's violating someone's personal space. And then there's this like you went too far. Well, the woman fell in love with a young man and soon they decided to to wed, but sure enough, on their wedding nights they started to have sex, and so he got his dick bit clean off. So yeah, that marriage didn't last. I guess he was like, I feel like I've sacrifice a lot. So she figured, I mean, one of the odds of this happening twice, who gets struck

by lightning twice? Right, So she married a second man and I guess did not disclose to him how her first marriage ended. So on their wedding night, consummation started, and once again her husband died. Damn, Sorry, Honny, I should have mentioned yeah, he's I mean, I imagine these fellas are just running screaming. Well, she starts thinking, Okay, maybe I'm trying to do the same thing here and expecting different results, right, So let me try and come

up with a solution. So she goes to a blacksmith and she said, hey, I need you to whip me up a big steal. Dick who is the blacksmith in our other episode where we talked about making dildo's, Oh my god, so like Josh or something, Josh the blacksmith, Josh the blo We'll go with it. This time it's josh y in Dick blacksmithing. Well, anyway, this blacksmith is like,

excuse me, you need me to make a what? And she explained her situation like, hey, I got this this tooth demon in my vagina biting dick's off, and Josh the blacksmith is like, oh, actually, totally I got you girl. Let me get out my dildo mold. Been there, done that? Oh yeah, I just fifty of these a week, teeth tooth demons at it again. Hey, well, pull out the mold. So he banged out a big steel dildo for her, and do you think that he was like, yeah, sure,

you got a demon in your vagina rights dildo. I'm

not here to ask questions, lady exactly, it's your money, lady. Well, at this point, the story kind of jumps forward to the results of this, but I like to imagine that she, to trick the demon had to hold a big, elaborate wedding ceremony and pretend that she was about to marry some dude, and then they get back to their honeymoon suite and she's like, okay, husband, I'm ready for you to put your big, fleshy, meaty penis inside my very safe vagina with no warning, and she slipped that steel

buildo inside and then of course the demon doing his thing, immediately went chomped, but instead of biting somebody's dick off, just like Yosemite Sam or Elmer Fudd getting hit in the teeth. All of his teeth just shattered and fell out of his mouth to do a hundred pieces. Yes, victory. And he's sitting this vagina. He's like, oh, man, without these teeth, I'm just gonna be sucking Dixon here the

rest of my life. So he decided it was time to vacate that vagina, and this lucky girl got to go on and get happily married, and she had many children happily every everything worked out. Yes, I'm a dick bitter, not a dick sucker, right, I need teeth. I'm not gumming dicks. The guys are like, actually this is great. It's just that's the opposite of what I watch, all right.

So in either of these stories, whether it's the healing the burns around the goddess vagina or biting off a steel dick and curing you from a demon, take it up residence. Blacksmith's doing great things for sexual health. Right. So, for a long time during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century, sex workers would go and pray to the kane Yama god and goddess at their shrine to help protect them from or cure sexually transmitted disease. Oh, I got a

demon in there, I know. Please put shatters to you, give me your holy dildo and get it out. And soon everyone was doing the same thing, but being sort of a shameful prayer. You know, you're, I guess, kind of admitting that if a sexually transmitted disease, or at least that you're having sex, which might be shameful to some people. Yes, not spoken about very much, right, So

it's sort of a shameful prayer. So it was always done at night at this shrine, and the tradition sort of fizzled out by the end of the eighteen hundreds. It was mostly forgotten until nineteen seventy when the chief priest of the surrounding temple, Hirohiko Nakamura, decided to bring it back, and he organized the first Sunday in April as a small night time gathering for people to pray for sexual health, protection from disease, help with fertility, and

healthy relationship. Very nice. Seventies makes sense, exactly right. Everyone's thinking about sex differently at that time, right, even in Japan. So yeah, I think you're right. Now. The resulting Kanamara Matsuri or penis festival stayed a pretty small festival. It went on for about forty years, relatively unnoticed now. It coincided with the Jibeta Matsuri or ground festival, which took place in the spring, and this was when bamboo shoots

were starting to pop through the surface. So people would go and they would seven the ground and like picnic outside, hoping to get some of the magical energy from the and boo coming up out of the ground. Interesting. Yeah, And soon the Kanayama Shrine parishioners decided that they would just kind of merge these two festivals in the daytime because they wanted to create quote a festival that anybody would be able to enjoy in daylight without being discriminated.

And that's according to Macha JP dot com. Yeah, okay, it's like, yeah, listen, we're all having sex. Does there have to be any shame involves Yeah, in praying for sexual health. Just give us this one day where we can come out and talk about it. Yeah, it's like a we can light it all out. It's like a purge. Yeah, you let it all out. We're good behavior for the

rest of the year. And they would have a small parade that took place that involved depictions of penis shaped structures and shrines, and people gradually came to feel open and comfortable about talking about sex and their sexual health on this day. And then, according to the culture trip dot com, in twenty twelve, a TV star named Matsuko Deluxe, who was an outspoken LGBTQ activist, name checked the festival

on TV and after that it just exploded. Suddenly everybody's talking about the penis parade, and it was popping up in like BuzzFeed articles, there's like videos trending about it. It just totally took off. And now the festival has sort of evolved and it is heavily dedicated to sexual openness, LGBTQ plus activism, and the fight against sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV. So they like raise a lot of money

at this festival as well. Cool, you have good causes. Wow, it's funny just one time talk about it on TV. So the name of the shrine is kana Yama, right, The festival name Kanamara is kind of a play on words. It says on Japan Dot Travel that the mara is an old Buddhist word meaning obstacle to Buddhist practice. Oh, when you think of it, your dick, you can't be a good yes, right, just anything that might get in the way of your enlightenment rights, yeah, or it's something

having to do with bad desires. According to Japan Travel Today dot com, okay, so, mara mata became slang for penish, something that might get in the way of your enlightenment, something that might get in the way or give you a bad desire. I could see it. And they mashed up kana yama and mata to create the Kana Mata festival. Okay so, on the festival day, the whole city is

all about the d It is bde all over that. Yes, there are dick shaped souvenirs, There are dick hats, there are dick boats, there are dick shrines being marched through the town. And it looks like a really insane party. People are playing drums and they were in special clothes and artwork that's bers and stuff, right, dick shaped food. Yeah,

it's just very much. Oh, I'd read this thing about this was on Japan Travel Today dot com that says for the truly adventurous, they have one stall that offered a sort of weak milky drink called amazaki and a snack that you ate with it that, when combined created the texture and taste of seamen. Oh. So you know, for anybody out there who doesn't know and wants to, that's that's how you try for yourself, try for yourself.

Maybe you learned something about yourself today. I don't know that it's a flavor people are chasing, but you know, not something I was ever really like, when are they gonna bring the doritos out in this flavor? You know, grow it's not looking for that. Oh my god. I mean, but I respect the commitment to the theme. Yes, she's gonna theme a party. You need to go with it. That's true. That's true. So they're like, let's make this dampen. They put a lot of work into making that just right.

So yeah, it's just like a big crazy I mean, you know, you could see probably a fraternity house having a similar type of party, or again a bachelorette party. Right, But keep in mind most of the article about this do note that there's still a degree of respectfulness and religiousness that carries through this festival. So it's not just about you know, like masturbation jokes or whatever. So if you go, try not to be you know, a dick. Right,

we got enough of those. Enjoy the dick. Don't be one, right. I don't mean that's not to say that it's solemn. You know, it's not like everyone's bowed their heads. It is a raucous, raunchy party. They know how funny it is. But I think there are people who who are you know, also having an experience of like I'm praying for my sexual health. I'm here today, you know, for religious purpose to hope that this sensation goes away or I do

or don't get pregnant or comes back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but there are a lot of as you point out, it is, they definitely lean into this obviously, and they know how much fun it is and how how wacky it is. Like some activities include carving a dicon route into the shape of a big ding or you can like pour wax into cute little cock candles. Oh yeah, right,

right for dicks. There's also these mikoshi or portable shrines that participants will carry through the streets in this very famous parade that happens at noon on the day of the festival, and the shrines are beautiful. Is you know? These tall, very Japanese structure looking shrines mikoshi exist in many festival parades. These particular ones carry big phallic statues in them, and they get carried through the streets of Kawasaki.

The people who are holding them up on their shoulders, they'll like rock them back and forth to help awaken the god's powers as they go. And there are three big famous dongs that everybody knows best. The oldest of the three and I could not find how old, but I like to think it's been around for centuries. It's the kanamara omekoshi. And this one is made of wood. I couldn't find an exact measurement, but from the pictures I could find, looks like a squat little dick like

maybe about two feet tall and pretty thick. Um. They're all pretty turgidum. The next one you might see in the parade is the Konamara Funa mikoshi, which is a very long, tall, like six foot tall, majestic schlong statue made of black iron. One's that one reminded me of the story, right, like that might be the one that got the demon. Oh sure, okay, yeah, that's the one that she defeated, right, the tooth guy with no my one ed amy metal dicks, my one weakness. No one

told me you could make this. Well. The third of these shrines, and maybe the most famous now is called Elizabeth Mkoshi and it's a bright pink penis probably about four feet tall, very exaggerated ridges and everything you'd expect. Yes, it's got the balls too, of course, if you're curious, they all do they need some to sit on, right, Yeah, just a nice base so they don't tip over this one.

The Elizabeth was donated to the festival by a famous Tokyo drag club called Elizabeth Kaikan, and originally after they donated this, only members of the drag club could carry the Elizabeth, but guidable dot com says that now they allow members of the festival association to carry it as well. But there one rule is that if you're carrying it, you have to cross dress. Oh yeah, I got to

be part of the yeah. An article in Yahoo News says that this shrine, in particular as the drag club, helped kind of convert the festival to being largely about health and LGBT issues. They collect donations that go to support things primarily like HIV research. Oh that's cool. Yeah, so it's very very heavily involved in like supporting underserved community is raising money, and that it does come with like one hundred thousand people, including sixty thousand tourists. Now

it's been a great fundraising opportunity. Sure, yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense because who wouldn't want to go check it out. I want to go check it out. I mean definitely would be in would love to be in Japan really anytime, anytime. Sure, I would take April, yeah and go to this. Let's see, Kawasaki, Japan is not far from Tokyo, so it's you know, practically a suburb. So I say we just go to Tokyo around late March early April. We can make it your birthday trip. Okay, Yeah,

let's go and plan that right now. Yeah. In fact, if we're in Romania on February twenty fourth and we start walking, then we might make it to Kawasaki in time. Let's see directions from Romania to Kawasaki, Japan twenty two hundred hours, which is that's only ninety four days. That's three months if we run for half of it, we might make it and don't stop to eat sleep. Yeah, yeah, we can't stop eats. Twenty four hours moving well, I don't know if I want that for my birthday. But

we got to go right through Russia. Oh cool, this is gonna be so easy. Yeah. Some of these kind of remind me of that. Remember that grandma in Mexico that had a big thick as your tombstone. Yeah, it's kind of yeah, they kind of look like that ds of their detail, I guess the detail in carving. But no, it's it's so fascinating. I mean, it's not subtle in the slightest. Find tons of videos and pictures about it out there. It's really fun. It looks like a great time.

Everybody that's there, they're all like these girls like stuck it on these cock lollipops and they're having a fan you know, they're just laughing it up. They're having a time, having fun. Um. So yeah, it just looks like a really good time. Yeah, and a good cause and a great cause now, which is cool too. I love the

mythology behind it. I think it's important that that doesn't get lost because that's again they mentioned that a lot of the a lot of the probably Western especially articles about this festival are very kind of single minded about it, and they're just like, Haha, look at all the dicks. But I think there's some really beautiful stories that come out of that. But then again, I'm a mythology freak anyway, so I love that stuff. I know, I love mythology. Yeah,

and these were great. I didn't know either of these, I know, right, I was unfamiliar. Well three, really we kind of got because between a dragobette and is an ami and he's an aggie, and then also the tooth tooth. Yeah, that's really three. Yeah, it really got quite a few. Now do you think that's where the fear of vagina

denttata came from? Also, well, that's another one that I'm wondering if that just has developed in different areas of the world at different times, because whenever you put your dick inside something, there is just that hint of a question of like, will will it come back out? No? Really, you know, just somewhere in the back of the like your monkey brain is thinking, make sure it's going to

come back out again? Because you only get one? Yeah, all right, I mean I kind of feel that when like you put your hand in a box and you don't know what's in the box, like you know, you certainly are like, oh wait a minute, this is kind of precious to me. I could reach and I want to know what's in there if I reach, if I reach beyond a wall, but I know there's nothing on the other side, but I can't see it. Part of me is nervous, fully convinced, yeah, that it will be

chopped off with yes, I agree. Yeah, so I could see that John Dentada developing independently over many cultures, or somebody did something real stupid and got their dick ripped off because they were like, you know, they stuck it into something they shouldn't have stuck it into. And everyone's like what happened And they're like, well, I was having sex. I was having lots of you know me, I'm always having seen me and I don't know this girl. I guess you just had a demon in there bit it

right off. And they're like, what that could happen? All these girls are like going home, like hello, anyone in there, please leave. I was like a normal's decks life. Thank you. Meanwhile, the guy actually just like tried to stick his dick in a water wheel or something, and definitely, but he's too embarrassed to say, I love your idea that she was just asking for a dildo and had to come up with an elaborate story for the Blacksmith. I love

what she came up with. Pretty credible. She should write that ship down Mary Shelley of her time coming up with horror shit. Blacksmith goes back to his wife and he's like, Honey, I found I've determined we have to start using this thing to make sure that there's no demons in there. His wife is like, wow, I'm yes, I didn't you insist? I mean, let it be known it was your idea. Can you blow one out of glass? Do you think just one of the irons a little cold? Sometimes,

let's keep working on this. We can work on this design. What if it buzzed? I'm just, you know, just curious, what if we filled it with bees? That shit still bugs me out when I think about it. That's an

older episode, yeah, and an older episode. We did a brief history of sex toys, and one of the things we learned was that Cleopatra apparently put bees into a hollow gourd to use as a vibrator, right, so she would just shake them up to get all mad and then like hold it against a precious area of her body, which I just don't understand, like you really trust this gored too close to danger. Oh, another fact I wanted

to bring up. I thought it was really interesting. One article said that, you know, you think of Japan as being a little more conservative about sex, and they are.

Apparently it's very uncommon to talk about sex in the open, like you don't mention your sex life in public, okay, But Japan has this culture where like on Saturday night you can go out and get go hog wild, get drunk with your boss, do karaoke till four in the morning, you can do all kinds of crazy shit, and then on Monday, when you're back at work, it's like it never happened. So this festival, it says, whole families will show up to celebrate sex and fertility, and you know,

and it's totally cool. Just for that one day we're allowed to kind of like you said, it's like a purge. Purge. Yeah, let's all go talk about sex. And then on Monday we won't bring it up again for a year. Right. That's so interesting that they're like, oh, well, you know, I know you got real fucked up and vomited on my lap right at the karaoke bar. But it's like you're still a great VP of sales or whatever. Never happened.

I don't know what you're talking about. Well, I hope you all enjoyed these stories of these love fests and where they came from and the myths that created them. I love this stuff. It's so fascinating to me, and I really hope you enjoyed it too. Yeah, so reach out and tell us what you think. If you've ever celebrated a dragon bette, or if you have gone to this Penis festival, or if you have a Penis festival of your own, you should sleep the nation. Yeah, well

you would love to hear about it. Please reach out. We're Ridict Romanth at gmail dot com. Right, you can find us on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Oh Great, It's Eli, I'm at dianamite Foom and we're also on TikTok now at Ridiculous Romance. Right, So, thank you so much for listening. We love how you spend your time with us and we really appreciate it. So we will see you next time for another crazy story. I love you, bye, so long friends, it's time to go. Thanks so listening

to our show Tell your friends names. Uncle's indance to listen to our show. Ridiculous Romance