Setsubun ...

Nigatsu (February) 3rd marks the Japanese holiday called Setsubun and since I have survived two of these now, I feel confident enough to actually write this blog on my own. Although I'll still probably manage to screw it up. :)

Setsubun was traditionally known as the day before the first day of spring. I think the term mean 'dividing seasons' but I'm not sure. Ugh ... I'm determined not to use Wikipedia for this. I don't quite understand how the holiday marks the beginning of spring considering that it's still winter up until March, but whatever. I do understand that today is February 21st and it is definitely still winter. I'm freezing as we speak.

So to celebrate Setsubun children participate in an event called mamemaki. It literally translates to 'throwing beans'. Roasted soybeans are thrown to ward off evil and bring in good luck. Kids do this at school, families do it together at home, and/or people do it at temple or shrine. I had the opportunity to participate in mamemaki this year at school and let me tell you ...

This stuff is nuts. First of all the kids spend the week making 'oni' (direct translation - ogre) masks for mamemaki. It's not the most constructivist activity, but whatever.

My 3 year olds & their masks:

My super sweet Hayato and his ogre interpretation ... He's 5 and I love him:

On the day of mamemaki we have an all school assembly and the teachers do a skit that represents some of the 'demon like' traits that the children are supposed to be fighting off when they throw beans. Is any of this making sense? Probably not. During the skit the teachers overly exaggerated the 'ogre qualities' of laziness, selfishness, anger, and whining (at least thats what I think they were) and the kids listened to the accompanying story. Then everyone practiced throwing pretend beans at the invisible ogres while chanting, 'oni wa soto fuku wa uchi' (meaning out with the devil, in with the good spirits), which is supposed to be like some sort of self cleansing process to get rid of all of your negative qualities.

Then we headed outside ...

The 2 year olds with their beans and their oni masks.

They're so cute and they have no idea what is about to happen:
3 year olds ....

The soybeans that we are about to toss around ... in origami boxes of course:

The 5 year olds have done this before, so they were prepared.

I was most definitely NOT prepared for what was about to go down:

So once all the kids are calmed down (and are least expecting it) this super creepy, haunted house like music comes on and ... you'll have to hit play to see what happens:

Isn't that terrible?!? The kids are screaming and crying while being chased by these terrifying monsters and the teachers are encouraging it by laughing and taking pictures. I was astonished. Call it culture shock.
The little kids were SO scared. This has to be traumatic on some level:
Hearing kids cry breaks my heart ... I felt so bad for these 3 year olds



Comforting the kids really isn't at the top of the priority list during mamemaki ...
but how could I not? Seriously!? I felt so bad taking a video of this girl crying that I had to put my camera down so I could pick her up and hug her.


Kanako Sensei broke the rules to hug this little one who's probably scarred for life :) :

SO not happy:
She was pretty unimpressed as well:

It wasn't all tears though. Because it's traditional the older kids knew exactly what was going on and had a lot of fun throwing beans at the monsters while chanting Japanese. There were some smiles when all was said and done, although we took a class survey that afternoon and over 90% of the kids admitted to shedding tears. Poor babies. :(

Some of the happy ones ...

That afternoon we had Setsubun snacks. Oni manju (the weird bean stuff) and beans. It is considered good luck to eat the same number of beans as your age. Luckily everyone gets these candy beans (although they really don't taste like candy, they still just taste like soybeans) to eat their good luck. Damn being 26.
much love

-tara-

xx