Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Setsubun (節分)

Japans got all these festivals and cultural stuff, its hard to keep track of when is what. Today was Setsubun. It basically means the day before the beginning of each season (celebrated yearly on Feb 3). The name literally means "seasonal division" but usually refers to the Spring. The special ritual that is associated with this day is called mamemaki (豆撒き aka bean scattering).The reason for this is to cleanse away all the evil from the past year and drive away all evil spirits in the coming year.

With that said, this morning a few people and I went to Narita Temple (成田山) to witness this insane event. My students have warned me about all the craziness that goes on. Last year 4.3 million people were recorded visiting Narita Temple on this day. We arrived a bit after 9am. We had no idea the bean throwing started at 1130... When we got there, we started to get barricaded in by security.We were basically barricaded in for 2.5 hours.
From Japan - February 2009
From Japan - February 2009
From Japan - February 2009
From Japan - February 2009
We just had to create our own fun while waiting but it really wasnt so bad. The nice old man in the picture above was a origami teacher so he made us all these cool paper cranes and things like that. But the crowd was insane, we were at the very front but people from the back kept pushing adn the ppl in front (though we were second "row") kept pushing back. These old women were just way too genki (げんき). Since you are supposed to catch and eat the beans that famous actors/actresses/sumo wrestlers throw, everyone was scrambling for them and it was every man for himself. Some of the famous people that went were the sumo champs (highest and second highest ranked sumos)
From Japan - February 2009
You can see the sumos in the back and all the others in front are famous people of some sort or another. Maybe politicians, actors, actresses, etc. We also saw the ex prime minister's son (Kotaro Koizumi) and he is a looker, one handsome man.

From Japan - February 2009
All the girls, well even grandmas were going nuts over him. People actually paid over $100USD to take a picture with him! It was a good experience though and today was an amazing day for the event. There was a ton of food and souveniers, I just wish I had more time to explore before work... damn work.

Anyway, heres a picture of the group minus Fab who was taking it and my lucky beans, which are just toasted soy beans. (more pix to be found on Picasa including the last of January)
From Japan - February 2009
From Japan - February 2009

2 comments:

Alvin said...

Just looked through your newest batch of pictures on Picasa. Very nice! Did you do any post processing? Bump the color saturation up or something? I love the colors. Very vibrant.

Lulu said...

nope, no post processing. I dont tend to, more so probably bc im lazy haha but thanks! :)