Mamemaki in Asakusa and Kenpou Graduation Party

Asakusa

A lot of people gathered

Mamemaki

Darth Vader

070203, Saturday

In Japan today is the spring setsubun, which means that it is the day before spring begins. On this day a special ritual, mamemaki, which literally means bean scattering, is performed. According to the ritual people throw soybeans out of their door or at a family member who is wearing an oni mask (demon mask). The meaning of this is to drive away the evil spirits of the former year and for the year to come. In addition, people eat soybeans to get luck. One bean for each year of your age. My friends and I thought that it sounded exciting so we decided to go to the Buddhist temple Sensoo-ji in Asakusa to see the mamemaki. When we arrived already a lot of people had gathered in front of the temple. On the "stage" of the temple famous Japanese men stod holding bags of beans, but unfortunately we could not see anyone wearing an oni mask. Then the men started scattering the beans over the audience, which tried to catch as many beans as possible. It was interesting watching. We were standing a bit in the back so unfortunately we were not able to catch any beans. I hope we will have a year full of luck anyway :)

In the evening I went to a party with my kenpou friends. At the club there are a couple of members that had finished studying four years and now graduated. To celebrate them all kenpou members gathered and had a tabehoudai and nomihoudai together. It was a lot of fun and the food was great; karage (fried chicken), fried shrimps, sashimi, rice etc, delicious! The graduates received funny presents. For instance, one of them got a Darth Vader mask which you can put on your head. Looking like Darth Vader you then can press different buttons to hear the famous breathing etc. There is also a voice transformer. A great gift hehe. Feeling content after the food a couple of the fighters and I continued to a bar/restaurant and had a couple of tasty drinks. Afterwards we went to sing karaoke. It was so much fun!! Kenpou is a pretty tough sport so it was nice to see this "softer side" of these tough guys. We sang from about 0.00-5.30 in the morning but it was so much fun that the time just flew away :) The tabehoudai and nomihoudai started at 6 o'clock in the evening so this time we all hang out for almost 12 hours!!