Setsubun

February 3, 2010

Happy Setsubun!

It's February 3rd here in Japan and that means it's the day of the bean throwing festival. I consider Setsubun the equivalent of St. Patrick's Day, given that you don't get a day off from school or work and I almost always forget about the holiday until it's literally the day of. Today, I was reminded just after fourth period when my teacher commented to a student that she was being strict with him, "like an oni," and the student responded by pretending to throw beans at her.

Supposedly families, especially ones with young children, celebrate Setsubun by throwing beans and saying, "Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi," which translates into "Demons begone! Happiness arise!" if you're being poetic, or, more plainly, "Bad luck outside, good luck inside." I have no idea who sweeps up the beans when all is said and done, because I've never seen that part celebrated. The most I've seen are a lot of teasing about who's an oni. Oh, and I got some peanuts today, which apparently qualify as beans. Heck, for all I know, they might technically be beans. Does anyone know the classification of peanuts? I know, thanks to an insanely old trivia robot, that a peanut is neither a pea nor a nut.

Setsubun is also celebrated by eating gia-normous rolls of sushi. I usually skip this part along with the beans, but today I didn't feel like cooking, so I picked up a log of deep-fried shrimp sushi. There's some sort of lucky direction you're supposed to eat it in, but I didn't bother to find out which one.

I am happy about Setsubun for two reasons. The first has to do with what the word Setsubun means. "Setsu" comes from the word "kisestu" and means season. "Bun" means split. The splitting of the seaons, which means, that winter is sort of unofficially at an end and spring is on it's way. Granted the first time I "celebrated" Setsubun (by receiving beans) I was in Nagoya and it snowed the next day. But I can feel signs of spring coming. The ume (plum) blossoms are starting to bloom, little and white and sweetly scented. I love ume, what I consider the first sign of spring. There are other little signs, too. My energy has been going up, and I've been more efficient and motivated. It's still cold, and yet the cold isn't really bothering me anymore. Once I've adapted to one season, it's a sure sign the next one is on its way. I'm happy, because I love spring. I love the weather, the flowers, and how inexplicitly genki I become.

The second reason I'm happy has nothing whatsoever to do with Setsubun. I just got the results from my JLPT, that ridiculously difficult test I've been studying for for the last two years. And guess what? I PASSED! I squeaked by with a 63%. (Passing is 60%) I got 76% on kanji and vocab, 61% on listening, and 58% on the doubly weighted reading and grammer. Level 2 means, and I quote, "The examinee has mastered grammar to a relatively high level, knows around 1,000 kanji and 6,000 words, and has the ability to converse, read, and write about matters of a general nature." Come to think of it, that sounds rather bland. A more concrete example: today I listened to a Japanese teacher (that is a teacher of Japanese) explain the meaning of an old, obscure Japanese quote in Japanese and I understood it, without asking an English teacher for translation or cracking open a single dictionary.

Sorry to brag so much, but I'm just in such a good mood. I think I'll celebrate by eating strawberry-flavored mochi ice cream.

Have a nice Setsubun!