The Famed Phallic Forms of Yaegaki Shrine

After our carp-streamer viewing, Miss T and I popped into Yaegaki Shrine, a shrine to fertility, virility, and marriage. Here many a coy young couple wander, praying for wedded bliss, and groups of women cast a coin and hope for a child. I first visited this place with my host family, and was alarmed when my host mother (in her fifties) caressed the famed wooden phallic structure (upon which I lean in the pic below). Not for the faint of heart, at this shrine willies lurk in tree-hollows, around corners, and by the wayside.

People place coins around the towering bits of wood, as well as the ceramic mouths of female netherlands, for luck in Baking Assorted Loaves in the Oven. Further back in the shrine grounds are two old, enormous sacred trees, wound about with rope and folded paper decorations, and at a pond, couples lay a paper prayer on the water's surface, and upon this place a coin: the longer it takes to sink, the longer it will take to marry.

Oo er, what have we here?

There are naughty things to be found in hollow places

Saucy tanuki

For more willies, take a right.

Touch wood