Kanamara Matsuri (The Cock Festival)

I'm just gonna let you know right now. I learned about a festival today, and that festival is called the Kanamara Matsuri. That was not how it was explained to me.

This elderly Japanese gentleman comes up to me.  He's radiating a question as I'm crouched down re-tagging some toys so I look up and wait. Typically when speaking a language that's not your first you're slower to form sentences and you speak slowly and more quietly so mistakes go unnoticed. This also makes it infinitely harder to understand.So he approaches and I wait for him to say what he needs. His accent is pretty heavy and he's almost whispering so I stand up and lean in a little. "Have you been to Japan?" I shake my head and smile, "No, I'd love to visit, they have this temple with deer who bow to you, a friend of mine went." This sank in, and I regretted getting off topic so fast. "Did you need something?" He nods and I can see the sentence percolating in his head. "In Japan, they have shrine. Festival. It's" and he mumbled something unintelligible. "I buy for my friends. In Japan, $100, but here is much cheaper, so I send to them." I process this, and come to the best fit conclusion. A lot of people buy sex toys from us to send to friends in other countries because ours are quite a bit cheaper and there's less restrictions on them. I assumed he was just being a good friend. So I take him around and show him a few of the slimmer ones since he indicated he didn't want it to be too thick.
He was having trouble deciding between two of them and as he was thinking about it, started elaborating on the festival he mentioned. "The festival they hang these up, all around the city." He gestured at the wall of dildos. I was sure I'd misheard him. "They hang up penises? ...Really?" He nodded, "They go to shrine, hang up cocks. It's the cock festival."

I must have misheard, what do they put on shrines?

 I realized the word I hadn't understood before was cocks, he was too embarrassed to say it above a mumble the first time. "What part of Japan is this? When is this?" He shrugged, "All over, I think maybe June. They go to shrine, have festival." Resolved to learn more later I laughed and told him it sounded like a fun time. Apparently he always buys three of four dildos to send to his friends around festival time. He always gets nice ones just in case his friends use them later. Concerned over the mounting price he decided to come back later for one of our discount days. I was getting pretty fond of him when right before he left he turned to me and said, "Are you married?" I laughed nervously and shook my head, lifting my left hand and shrugging, "Not even engaged." He nodded to himself, turned and left. Really hoping he doesn't come back and propose. Best case scenario he has a grandson he wants me to meet.