Setsubun: February 3rd 2008
Setsubun is a holiday in Japan and is the day before the beginning of spring. Spring Setsubun can be 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, scattering of beans). haha explanation of wikipedia. gomen
We all went to Kushida jinja and I remember that day the weather was so awfull. It was raining the whole time, but that didn’t matter. Kushida jinja was really full with people and there was even a line to go praying. We just went in the crowd to wait for kabuki actors who would throw the first beans and other stuff. When the kabuki actors finally came, all the women were screaming so loudly. haha funny. But the problem was me, Sam and Kris were standing behind Michael, who is 2 meters tall and also Marc, who is also very tall. 
When they started to throw candy, balls and beans our way they could catch everything. T_T so sad One time Michael even jumped to get something and he almost fell on us. yabai. So we went to stand in the back, becuz als the Japanese people were a little pushy. If you caught the balls you got a prise, a daikon or if the daikon’s were out another vegetable. hahaha I was actually happy I didnt caugt a ball cuz i didn’t want to have a daikon. ^^ After this the priests or I don’t know the proper name for them-people (just old men) came and they sand the hakata song and also throw stuff, while saying 鬼は外、福はうち。or Devil outside, goodluck inside. At the end most people were gone from the place and when they still were throwing stuff I could get some candy (mochi).
After this ceremony we all went back to kaikan. There we would make 恵方巻き all together. First everybody went to jusco to get some ingredients to put in the roll and then we could start to make it. The tutors helped us to roll the sushi. Then we waited for each other and when everybody was finished we ate each our own makizushi together. While eating we had to face this year’s lucky direction, this time it was the south direction. We had to be quiet while eating or otherwise it would be bad luck. Then after this delicious ehomaki we had to eat beans. We had to eat as much as our age, so I had to eat 20 beans that time. It wasn’t really おいしい, it had a real dry taste. Didn’t like it. After eating the beans we throw some beans out of the kaikan window while saying that same sentence as before and that was it. It was actually really nice to experience this holiday once.
