On Thursday, the people of Japan celebrated the traditional holiday of Setsubun. I think traditionally it marked the beginnning of spring. But anyway, the tradition is to drive away the demons for the rest of the year. So people do this by (what else) throwing small nuts or beans at people dressed up as demons. I had the pleasure of doing this at an area elementary school. All the kids were very competetive as to who would get to wear the little cardboard demon mask. Then each kid got a handful of peanuts still in the shell, then at once, proceeded to launch the peanuts at the 2 poor kids from point blank range. Nothing was off limits. Shots to the face, eyes, mouth, ears persisted thanks to some juvenile adults in the room...ah hem. It was a little strange that the girl who wanted to be the demon so badly ended up in tears due to a laser guided peanut missile to her ear. Was that me? oops.
It's rather bizarre, they showed other celebrations on TV where an elaborately dressed demon walked into a classroom of nursury students and proceeded to grab them and get in their face until the kids scream in terror and fear for their lives. Fantastic stuff.
Pictured here is a Setsubun demon constructed from bread and presented to me by a Keitoku Elementary teacher. I thought the eyebrows were mini-sausages at first, but they turned out to be a sweet pastry roll. It was a pretty delicious demon with a little strawberry jelly.
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