Setsubun Festival

3rd February

There was a Japanese festival on today which we went to. It was like a good luck festival where they keep away the evil spirits so they can have good luck for the year. It happens on the 3rd of February every year which is the eve of the first day of spring. On this day people in Japan scatter roasted soybeans inside and outside their homes. "Fortune in, bad spirits out". In Japanese they say " Fuku wa uchi, oni wa soto".

The first part of the festival was a burning ceremony.
They burn paper bags and logs to get rid of all the bad spirits. Then there was some sort of procession and a little dance. After that they threw out lucky beans. There were lots of bags of beans being thrown into the crowd of people. It was quite funny watching all the Japanese people trying to catch these bags of beans. I didn’t think I would catch any at first and then I changed my tactic – I went further to the front and fought amongst the Japanese to catch one. It was like playing marks up - seriously. If a bag fell on the ground they would all scramble to pick it up. It was almost like a pile up! ☺ I eventually caught one and was so excited. I was then motivated to catch even more so I pushed my way into the crowd even more so I could catch some for everyone else. I ended up catching in total about 8 bags of lucky beans. I really had to fight for these though. This means that I am going to have a very lucky year!!

When the crowd lessened I went up to the people wearing the masks and they actually let me put one of the masks on. It was pretty funny and very heavy. I don’t know how they wore it for as long as they did. I would have fallen over.

At night we had a ‘Pot Luck’ welcome part for all of us new Aussies in our residence. All the Japanese local community people came to meet us as well as the Americans who live in the building. Everyone had to bring a plate of food to share. I made chicken curry. About 60 people came so it was a pretty good turn out. It was actually a really good party because we were able to meet lots of really nice Japanese people. There were quite a few who offered to take us out too. I invited one of my adult classes from the University and about 5 of them came. They really enjoyed themselves. We were introduced to everyone at the party and when my name was called the people from my class all cheered for me. It was like I had my own personal fan club. It was quite funny.

The party wrapped up around 9:30pm and then we moved on to Coast. This will probably become our local pub. We actually rode there – this could become slightly dangerous so I am not sure how often we will ride there. We didn’t get home until 2am.