NAKED MAN FESTIVAL ENDING AFTER 1,000 YEARS

An annual Japanese event commonly known as the “naked man festival” is ending after nearly 1,000 years due to the declining population in the area, organizers said. The event involves hundreds of loincloth-clad men gathering at the Kokusekiji Temple in Oshu, Japan, to wrestle. The winner gets a bag of talismans blessed by the temple’s chief priest. For more than 1,000 years, the festival was held annually on the seventh day of the Lunar New Year. The last one took place last Saturday. Organizers said this decision is due to the aging of individuals involved in the festival and a shortage of successors.
* Wait – no one wants to watch elderly men wrestle naked? What’s the problem?
* Things just sometimes run their natural course after 1,000 years. The naked man festival is all behind us now.
* You’re just going to have to find a different way of introducing yourself to your neighbors other than naked wrestling.
* The temple priests will now be selling their talismans on Etsy.
* When they said there was a shortage at the naked man festival, I thought they meant something different.