Your Japanese word of the week is...

"setsubun". "Setsu" is derived from "kisetsu", or season. The latter part of the word, "bun", means part/division. For instance, "hanbun" is half and "yonbun no ichi" is "one out of four parts". It follows, then, that "setsubun" is the division of the four seasons of the year and, more specifically, means the day prior to the start of each season.

More broadly speaking, setsubun most commonly refers to the start of spring and is celebrated on Feb 3rd with a ritual known as "mamemaki", or "bean scattering".

This was a present from one of my English students. The beans meant to be scattered are the green ones, which are roasted soy beans. During the mamemaki, the soy beans (you can buy big packs of them; they're not all in such fancy boxes) are tossed out the door while shouting "Oni wa soto", meaning "Demons out". Then you chuck some inside the house and say "Fuku wa uchi", or "Fortune in". It's a ritual to drive out the bad spirits and bring in the good ones. Then you go around the house picking up the soy beans that you tossed........

Or, if you have family members around the house, you can get one of them to don a monster mask and hurl soy beans at them instead, yelling at them to leave. All in the name of good luck, of course =)......

Afterwards, you eat as many beans as you are old plus one more for good luck, so that was 25 for me. I might suggest not watching a movie while eating them because I lost count at 3....... and 8...... and 9...... and 10. At which point I scarfed down 15 more just to get it over with =P.......

But then again, I ate more afterwards so that would technically make me about 84 years old...... Hmm.......

Regardless, there are also coloured items as you can see, and they're mostly either powdered sugar or sugar coated soy beans. Tasty.....

In other news, it snowed again yesterday. Like, real snow that stuck, not just flurries like two weeks ago, even though it still wasn't much anyway. But some people went way overboard and put chains on their tires! I was walking down the street and saw two cars with tire chains rumbling down what was basically a clear road. I can't imagine the asphalt lasting too long if people get that serious about snow driving.

It seriously wasn't that bad but I guess some people get a bit freaked out.

But it's nice and sunny today, so it's mostly melting, which I'm a bit grateful for. As much as I love the snow, biking in it is a bit dangerous......