This year’s immersive lights display takes inspiration from the atmosphere of a Japanese summer festival with firework and firefly designs.
naked
Thankfully, there’s still no actual nudity attached to these modern-meets-traditional installations to celebrate the spring.
Ever find yourself in a really awkward or compromising situation? The kind where you wish the earth would split open and swallow you up, or you could somehow be whisked away to some magic far-away land where you’d never have to show your face to the real world again? We’re pretty sure that’s what this 55-year-old university lecturer was feeling when he was found on campus, wearing nothing but his birthday suit. How he ended up that way is an even more interesting issue.
Earlier this month, the Katamachi branch of the Chinese food restaurant Gyoza no Osho (King of Gyoza) in Kanazawa City, Japan, shut down after a group of men decided to drop in on the royal dumpling restaurant dressed in nothing but their birthday suits.
There have been reports in the Taiwan media this week of a naked man walking and occasionally jogging along the street on a busy afternoon. Passersby caught the event on their phone cameras at various points along his journey.
In a strange twist, however, thanks to the blurry resolution of these cameras the man looks exactly like a real-life titan from the manga/anime series Attack on Titan. The following video illustrates just how eerily close a comparison the man makes with a titan.
Recently our correspondent Kuzo was interviewing pizzerias in Sicily. As a result he found himself eating pizza all day every day. Being a gastronomic pro, our reporter was unfazed, but suddenly wondered how the sushi in Italy was. Figuring Sicily’s excellent seafood may yield some equally good sushi, he tracked down a restaurant in Palmero.
However, what he found was so shocking, he couldn’t even remember how the sushi tasted. Kuzo had stumbled on the fabled practice of nyotaimori – eating sushi off naked women.
Japan’s premier naked festival, Sominsai (Somin Festival), was held this year on January 29 at Kokuseki Temple in Iwate Prefecture.
The name “naked” is somewhat misleading though, as participants are required to wear a fundoshi, a piece of white cloth which can best be descried as a traditional Japanese G-string. This scant clothing offers little protection from the blistering, below-freezing cold participants are expected to endure. Nevertheless, the toughest of men from across Japan come to test their mettle by trekking through grueling icy course from the temple to the river that’s cold enough to make you feel like you’re dying.
I know this because I took part.
That’s right, your fearless reporter put his life at risk to bring the experience of Kokuseki’s Sominsai to you, our beloved readers.





![[On Location at Somin Naked Festival] I Was So Cold I Actually Thought I Was Going To Die [On Location at Somin Naked Festival] I Was So Cold I Actually Thought I Was Going To Die](https://soranews24.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2012/01/sominrepo1.jpg?w=580)
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