Feb 3.Setsu-bun

節分 Setsu-bun is one of the traditional Japanese seasonal festivals. It's usually around February 3rd, the same day as Chinese new year. This is a celebration of the (early) beginning of Spring, adapted from China in the eighth century according to wiki.

The only thing I remember about this celebration is that it's the day when you throw beans at an 鬼 'Oni' (a Japanese folklore demon) to get rid of bad luck and call for more 福 'Fuku' good luck. Kids usually throw the beans at someone dressed as an oni, chanting "demon out, good luck in."

(As a kid, I threw peanuts and individually wrapped chocolates at my parents house. Afterwards you get  to pick them up and then eat them after.)

As same as any other 'holiday' in japan, marketers thought it was a great opportunity to sell some more stuff and so they promoted setsubun as the day to also eat sushi rolls for some reason.  You are supposed to eat sushi rolls with seven things rolled in it (the number refers to the 7 traditional Japanese gods and goddess). We ate sushi rolls, but since I'm in Netherlands, and can not find all those ingredients, I decided to just eat our favorite: avocado roll with mayonnaise. Close enough. And oh, this year we were supposed to eat this sushi facing south-southeast. Don't ask me why, something about Chinese numeral system and yin-yang.

The weeks before setsubun, lots of Candies, bean products and sushi rolls at super markets in Japan come with paper masks of demons. I remember how much fun it was to collect all the different kinds from different stores when I was a kid. I tried to remember how they looked like and we drew one ourselves.

The Japanese ones pretty much looked like  a red or blue face with cute pink cheek and  horns. This is how our turned out.  It looks more realistic (even though it isn't a real one) due to Rowan's awesome drawing skill.

It was really hard to find individually wrapped candies in here, so these are our Dutch style setsubun beans: Hema yogurt coated raisins, Easter egg chocolates and Mini kitkats.

you throw them at an Oni (Rowan)

Then you are supposed to eat the same number of beans as your age after throwing them. Here we ate the same number of yogurt coated raisons...(they were way tooo sweet).


With easter egg chocolates, it's kind of like an awesome combination of Easter, and Halloween (scary Oni) and throwing things at people which is always fun. You have to then look around the room and find all the candy that you threw, like an easter egg hunt. 


The only problem with using easter egg chocolates instead of peanuts or dried soybeans is that it hurts when you get them thrown at you (as Rowan confirmed).