(The Mochi Carrying Race Festival)
Think You're Man Enough to Lift This Cake?












 Okayama Prefecture's most famous festival is its Naked Festival. But for those with a taste for the slightly odd, there is a lesser known festival in Okayama that you should probably consider attending.
Aida-cho is a beautiful little town, set among the green hills of eastern Okayama, one of several towns that merged in 2005 to form the city of Mimasaka. Each February, Minketsuji Temple holds its Gotairiki Mochi Eyou. In the main event of the festival, participants compete to see how far they can carry a mammoth cake of mochi. Mochi, if you don't know, is a dense cake made by pounding rice into a paste with heavy wooden mallets. In small portions, it's a traditional snack especially popular around the New Year. In huge portions, it becomes a heroic test of strength.

According to both local legend and the temple's own records, the festival memorializes a gift that the farmers of Aida-cho made to an Emperor who had been deposed and exiled following one of Japan's many internal struggles. They fashioned a mochi cake, so heavy that several men were needed to lift it.
The festivities begin at around ten in the morning, when local elementary school children vie to hoist and carry a 53 kilogram (116.6 pound) cake. There is also an event for women. But the big draw is the men's event. A path is marked out with ropes, and many of the town's 4,000 inhabitants flank the path, pressing forward to cheer the contestants.
Though the festival is little known outside Aida-cho, word gets around and each year brings contestants from both Okayama prefecture and farther afield, eager to test themselves. For this year's festival, nearly thirty competitors ranging in age from 14 to 69 gathered to prove their strength. And they have to be strong, because for the men's event the challengers must carry not one but two rice cakes, as well as the wooden platform supporting them. The total weight is 185 kilograms, or 407 pounds!
It takes 5 or 6 assistants to lift the mochi so that the competitors can grasp it. Then they must turn around and begin walking. For some, the simple act of balancing the mochi and turning is too much, and they drop it before they've even begun. Others are more successful, leaning back and clasping the cakes to their chest as they start out. Wearing white headbands and happi coats, the men labor down the path. Their faces redden with the effort, some of them cursing between clenched teeth, while the crowd urges the stalwarts on with cries of "Yoisho, yoisho!" When they've carried it as far as they can, they drop it, stepping quickly back. Winning distances are usually in the neighborhood of twenty meters, which is really fairly amazing.
So, if you want to see (or even take part in!) a truly unusual Japanese festival, try to time your trip to Western Japan to coincide with the Gotairiki Mochi Eyou. Oh, and the winner goes home with thirty thousand yen!


>>Date
First Sunday of February
  Children's race starts at 10:00
  Adults' race starts at 13:00

>>Access
Car
Chugoku Express Way, Mimasaka IC===(20 min.)===Kenmitsuji Temple in Aida-cho

>>Map
Okayama prefecture map>>Click here to view.

-Matt Mangham

>>Hotels and Ryokans in the center of Okayama