Watch out for the Demons!

Today is Setsubun and it's almost over. I spent part of the morning being pelted with soy beans. Oh yeah; did I mention I was dressed as an "Oni", or a Japanese demon. Each class in my school took turns pelting the beans at me in order to "symbolically" drive away the evils of the year and welcome in good things.

One Japanese tradition is to eat soy beans after you've pelted them at the man dressed as the "Oni." You're supposed to eat one for every year you've been alive. I was apprehensive at first, but once I began chomping down on these little brown things, I instantly realized that they taste pretty awesome.

Another tradition for many Japanese people on Setsubun is to eat "Norimaki", which is a sushi roll. When I came home from work, my lovely wife had one for each of us as well as a special miso soup and a large sardine to eat. All traditional food for the day and it was pretty damn delicious!


This was one of my students' lunches today. Her mother had prepared this at home for her. I love the rice, in the image of an "Oni." Very cool dtuff indeed.

By the way, it was amazing how so many students were able to throw beans into the eye holes of my demon mask. Wow, some of them really stung!

Wow, it's Setsubun! 節分

It's been almost a week since my previous blog. Simply put, I'm damn busy. It's coming close to the end of the Japanese school year, I'm putting together final student assessments, student portfolios and making a graduation DVD. Also, I have my Japanese class and my running schedule to attempt to keep up with.

Today I went for a run and hunkered down for the afternoon to edit some videos for my You Tube channel as well as work on some collaboration videos. Hopefully, very soon, there will be some very cool things happening with my channel.

It's almost February, and it's almost time for Setsubun. Setsubun is another Japanese festival that has to do with ridding the world of evil and bringing in the new, so to speak.

In Japan, Setsubun (節分) is the day before the beginning of each season. The name literally means "seasonal division", but usually the term refers to the spring Setsubun, properly called Risshun (立春) celebrated yearly on February 3 as part of the Spring Festival (春祭, haru matsuri?). In its association with the Lunar New Year, Spring Setsubun can be thought of (and was previously thought of) as a sort of New Year's Eve, and so was accompanied by a special ritual to cleanse away all the evil of the former year and drive away disease-bringing evil spirits for the year to come. This special ritual is called mamemaki (豆撒き, lit. bean scattering). Wikipedia

Here's my video about my Setsubun preparations.

Wow, it's Setsubun! 節分


Here's the video I made about last week's 10km road race I ran on Rokko Island.

Is He Running Again?

Original here.