Japan’s bizarre giant PENIS parade sees young brides ride 7ft-tall wooden phallus through streets for ancient fertility ritual (video)

In the UK, it's good luck for the bride to wear something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.

But across Japan, you'll stand a better chance of marital success if the bride climbs atop a giant wooden penis and is paraded through town while waving to everyone.

The Hodare festival in the city of Nagaoka is considered one of the country's biggest, and best, penis festivals - and there are a few.

On the second Sunday of March each year, women who have wed in the past 12 months don traditional Japanese bridal gowns and straddle a totemic tool as it is carried through the streets.

The gigantic, seven foot phallus is celebrated as an emblem of good fortune, with huge crowds gathering to touch and stroke the mighty member as it passes.

The festivities are seen as bestowing fertility, marital bliss and good luck on those who participate.

"Hodare" translates into English as "male genitals", although apparently if spelled out in caps it means "ripening of rice plants" .
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It is believed therehave been Hodare festivals held in japan for centuries, although in recent years they have, unsurprisingly, become much bigger tourist attractions.

The parade comes after news that a housewife hacked at her husband's penis with a kitchen knife because he wouldn't have sex with her for over a decade.

Sex starved Rita Yadav almost fully detached Ved Prekash's genitals from the base during her vicious outburst, leaving him in a critical condition and with a cut that was almost four inches deep.

It took surgeons FIVE HOURS to reattach his penis and although Ved, 31, is now out of danger, he's still in hospital recovering.

Before slashing at his bits, Rita, 28, knocked out her taxi driver husband by hitting him over the head with a stone grinder.

She locked him in the bathroom following the attack at their home in Ghaziabad, northern India, on Thursday morning and then handed herself in at the local police station - telling horrified detectives that her actions were revenge.