And a merry setsubun to all!

Yesterday, February 3rd, we celebrated setsubun here in Japan. Didn't you?

Basically, setsubun marks the beginning of spring. It's a divider of all seasons, but spring is special to the japanese, so its' coming should be greeted with music and laughter, and cheer. And, obviously, by throwing beans. 

At me.

By the ancient and revered tradition of mamemaki (mame being the beans), the japanese exorcise evil spirits for the coming year. Roasted beans are either thrown out of the door ("And don't come back, bean!") or at a member of the family, dressed up as an oni – a demon or ogre.

Now, here's where it gets exciting.

One way of celebrating setsubun is by having celebrities throwing bags of beans (um, yeah) to anxious civilians, such as myself, Akiko-san, José, Eric and his girlfriend Yvonne, and Yu-Lin.

The theatre of this affair was Ikegami, two short stops away from Kugahara.

More specifically, it took place at a temple where one could conveniently do a bit of worshipping as well.

It went down like this.

A calm, tuesday afternoon. Hundreds of people.

Then, this gang appeared. Cool. Like something out of Conan. They were followed by a big bunch of celebrities, none of which I knew. At all. None.

Suddenly, chaos! Handfulls of beanbags were thrown into the crowd, who responded by going apeshit berzerk, grasping at the morsels.

Taking no prisoners. José, eager to score him some luck, makes a clean one-handed catch. 

It should at this point be noted that I, who didn't really try to catch anything and instead hid behind my camera, had secured four bags. They all hit my face.

Bombardment! I guess being tall and white as a ghost makes you kind of a bulls-eye for sadistic japanese tv-celebs.

When the smoke had cleared, the dead carried away or eaten by carrion birds, we left the scene. I had, mostly by standing in the way, caught eight bags. Eight. A good few more than your average elderly, 123 cm high japanese woman. Take that, haters.

After this fresh experience, we walked back to Kugahara. It took longer than expected, and showed me once again that this part of Ota-ku has little to offer, but is quite nice to walk through.

Another segment of our celebration, and something I guess Akiko-san wanted to do anyway, was making our own sushi. Awesome! I always wanted to try that, and having a japanese housewife show you the ropes certainly adds to the impression.

We only made maki-sushi, since that has something to do with setsubun. But we made tons of it.

Rice, cucumber, lettuce, omelette and nori.

 This is Choi Jong Hak, who's going back to Korea in two days. I'll miss him.

Akiko-san's knife-skills: the art of turning this…

… into this! Served with a hearty miso-soup. Unbeatable.