Word: matsuri
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Think of it as the Japanese Mardi Gras. Held in May, the 350-year-old Sanja Matsuri festival brings 1.5 million revelers to Asakusa in eastern Tokyo to honor the three founders of the district's Sensoji - a Buddhist temple that is the city's oldest. The throng, more densely packed than any rush-hour train, is an unforgettable spectacle. Young and old are adorned in festive clothes, and pant with the effort of bearing dozens of mikoshi (portable shrines) through Asakusa's 44 residential blocks, while yakuza in loincloths proudly sport their full-body tattoos in a normally forbidden...
...Sanja Matsuri takes place on the third weekend of May. On the Friday prior, floats process to Asakusa Shrine, a Shinto place of worship close by Sensoji, for the binzasara no mai, or "harvest dance." The mikoshi parade comes the following day. Locals say that the more a shrine sways and shakes, the greater the gods' favor. The festival ends on Sunday, usually with a parade of the three mikoshi belonging to the local shrine. But because revelers became so rowdy last year - climbing on to the structures during the procession - for safety reasons the three mikoshi...
...thousands of men in central Japan each winter, there's only one acceptable response: strip down to almost nothing and go chase him. That's the way it has been done in the city of Inazawa for centuries. The event is perhaps the most famous of several hadaka matsuri, or "naked festivals," held around Japan annually...
...mountain spring, you can take the plunge even in the steel-and-glass capital of Tokyo. Like the best public baths, my favorite is a neighborhood secret. Hidden on the seventh floor of a department store building in old Asakusa, Matsuri-yu is frequented by locals who come in the morning and stay all day. That's because it's more a spa than a tub. For starters, each of the many baths boasts different mineral infusions for a variety of benefits. There are Jacuzzis, outdoor baths, aromatherapy saunas, massage rooms, facialists, darkened resting rooms, even a vast tatami...
Back at the American Village a month after the incident, a matsuri is in full swing. But across the street, in front of a billboard for the movie Pearl Harbor, is a group from the local Ryukyu University. The students wave banners and shout hoarsely into bullhorns: "We oppose American bases on Okinawa! We oppose President Bush! We oppose violence to women! We will not rest till the bases...