As David Weber’s photos earlier this week showed, Japan’s weather this winter is downright frigid—even here in the sunnier climes of Kyushu, where it seldom falls below freezing.

Most sensible people bundle up to go outdoors when the temperature drops, but not the boys from Bungotakada, Oita Prefecture. Last Sunday, they stripped down to their loincloths and jumped in the Katsura River just to get the free booze handed out by onlookers lining the shore.

I know you can’t beat the price, but I prefer to go fully clothed into a heated shop and pay for mine.

For the full story on this and two other festival frolics, as well as photos, click on the link below.

Actually, they’re not so desperate that they’ll do anything for a taste. They were participating in the local Horan’enya festival, a traditional event that dates back to the middle of the Edo period. It originated to pray for the safety of the boats used to transport the annual rice tribute to the local daimyo and the shogunate in Osaka. While they were at it, they also threw in a request for a big catch of fish in the coming year. Braving the elements, the men board the boats, called horaisen, and row upstream while chanting, “Horan’enya, enyasa no sassa!” This may help to keep them warm and their blood circulating in their semi-clothed state. During the trip, the intrepid sailors toss red and white mochi to the people on the shore, who reciprocate by ladling out the sake to anyone silly enough to jump nearly naked into a river in mid-January.

At least they encourage the boatmen by cheering them, which is the least you can do for people who risk cardiac arrest for a drink. The festival used to be held on New Year’s Day, but the townsfolk recently changed the dates to take advantage of the tides. It’s hard enough plunging into the ice-cold water without having to worry about whether you’re going to land on some rocks at low tide, too. The photo, by the way, shows the horaisen decked out with fishing pennants for the event, despite looking as though the swabbies have hung their wet towels out to dry.

They aren’t the only Kyushu crazies who dig jumping into cold water in January, either. Just the day before, the Kasuga Shrine in Kasuga, Fukuoka Prefecture, held its Muko’oshi Festival. The name of the event literally means “groom-pushing”, and it’s held to honor the local men who got married during the previous year. Perhaps the ancients thought they needed to get used to being pushed around by their wives before they have a few anniversaries under their belt.

One of the festival highlights is—you guessed it—men younger than 45 (including the newlyweds) stripping down to their loincloths, participating in a ritual purification ceremony, and then leaping into a nearby pond to duke it out for the possession of a barrel, which will be broken up in the fray. The lucky guys who take home some of the splinters will place them on the Shinto altar in their home. Legend has it that they will be blessed with good fortune, a rich harvest, and swift healing of any bruises, lacerations, and broken bones they incurred during the tussle.

That’s not the only abuse they took that night. After the barrel’s shards are divvied up, the men married in the past year head for the temple, where they are pushed around “as if it were a game of oshikura manju” by townspeople cheering in chorus. One wonders if their mothers-in-law are part of the group. The festival ends on a fitting note with the new grooms getting sacred water poured all over them. That should be enough make all the foreign guys coming to Japan looking for women to think twice.

You won’t be surprised to find out that the locals love this event, which draws large crowds every year.

I know what you’re thinking, but no, the crowds do not consist primarily of women, whether they were married in the previous year or not. To show that it does not discriminate on the basis of sex, the city of Kasuga dishes out the punishment to the brides, too. On the same day, the Sumiyoshi shrine in a different part of town holds the annual Yomego no Shiritataki, or Bride-Spanking Festival.

Before you get carried away by indignation or excitement, as the case may be, I hasten to point out that the people doing the spanking are not the husbands—remember, they’re being shoved around at a shrine in a different part of town—nor wealthy old men indulging their strange tastes. Rather, the designated spankers are children, perhaps getting their revenge in advance, and proper decorum is observed as the young women are in kimono throughout. Sorry to disappoint you.

The kids do the paddling with sticks wrapped in straw. There are different interpretations regarding the origins of this festival. One holds that it helps the women get settled in their new homes…hmmm…and another is that it leads to being blessed with children. I’d say the women get the better end of the deal, as it were, because they don’t have to strip down and fight over a barrel in a pond or get drenched with purified water. Though considering some of the programs broadcast on cable TV these days, perhaps it’s not too long before the folks in Kasuga decide to update their traditions and combine them in a particularly imaginative way. And besides, as the photo shows, it’s not as if the little urchins are winding up and giving them a stout whack. It looks more like a light tap to me.

The festival was discontinued during World War II, as some people thought smacking young women on the butt was barbaric, but those wishing to uphold tradition won out when the event was revived in 1982. The festival is cancelled, however, if no women from the neighborhood got married the preceding year. No such luck for the men—even in the absence of new bridegrooms a few of the guys get dragooned into service for the sake of cultural continuity.