In the farming hamlet of Omata, on the Seto Inland Sea side of Yamaguchi, grown men in formal crested kimono sit facing one another on the first Sunday of December and laugh — three times, at full volume, as an act of worship. The rite is called Waraiko, and it has been performed since 1199, passed down through the same twenty-one households of Hofu's Daido district for more than eight centuries.

Each laugh has an assignment. The first gives thanks for this year's harvest. The second prays for the next. The third — and this is the part that stays with you — exists to laugh away the year's griefs and hardships, to leave them in the old year where they belong. A half-hearted laugh may be made to do over; the gods, it is understood, can tell.

The ceremony takes place at Omata Hachimangu shrine, beginning late morning, with the laughing rite itself around one in the afternoon. It is designated an intangible folk cultural property of Hofu City, and journalists like to call it one of Japan's strangest festivals, though on the ground it feels less strange than sensible: a year-end party stripped to its oldest, most necessary function — an agricultural rite welcoming the god of the coming year. Hofu is an easy detour from Yamaguchi city or Shunan on the JR Sanyo Line. Come with something you are ready to laugh off.