Celebrating the Japanese Festival SETSUBUN

Today we celebrated Setsubun “The Bean Throwing Festival” with our dear Japanese friend Nina and her mother Mie. Setsubun is the celebration of the beginning of Spring in Japan and many families perform “mamemaki” a ritual to cleanse away all the evil of the former year, drive away all the evil spirits for the year to come, bringing good luck to all. The ritual consists in throwing baked soybeans on the head male of the household wearing and Oni mask.  As we were in school we invited the head of our school to be Oni and he gladly agreed.