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Lucky Star's Washinomiya Shrine Hosts Moe Festival

The annual "Moe Fes" festival celebrating moe subculture was held on November 3 at the Washinomiya Shrine in Saitama prefecture.

16 people participated in the first event of the festival, the "Yell Out Your Moe in the Heart of Washimiya" event, where participants yelled out confessions and statements about moe on stage. One man yelled, "Kagami, marry me!" Another female middle-school student yelled, "What's so bad about being rotten?!," a reference to the word fujoshi, which literally means "rotten woman" and can refer to female otaku in general.

The yearly festival, which is free, launched in 2009 and is now held every autumn. More than 50 people from outside of the prefecture participated in the event. Other events for this year's festival included "Itasha of the Year" (itasha are decorated cars), and an impersonation contest. The festival also hosted a "Moelympics" event, which included athletic events such as a relay race, a tug-of-war contest, a three-legged race, an obstacle race, and a jump-rope parade.

The Washinomiya Shrine was used as the basis for a location in Kyoto Animation's 2007 television adaptation of Kagami Yoshimizu's manga Lucky Star. It has since become a popular destination for anime fans, who make "pilgrimages" to the shrine. The Kuki City neighborhood that also served as the backdrop the series has been hosting Lucky Star match-making events for otaku since 2010, and the neighborhood held another event earlier this year.

Source: Mainichi Shimbun