Bean-Throwing Festival

For the past week my local bento shop had this beautiful poster of these yummy things that look like Oshinko rolls, so hubby and I inquired into it. Turns out those were ehomaki (恵方巻) for the Setsubun (節分), or Bean-Throwing Festival. that is celebrated on February 3 of every year. The "ritual" of the festival is for someone to wear a demon mask standing outside the door, and then the person inside the house would throw a handful of soy beans out the door while reciting, "Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!" (鬼は外! 福は内! - Demons out! Luck in!). Supposedly, all evils are chased out this way and the household is kept safe and healthy for the rest of the year. 

I was way more interested in the ehomaki than anything else, so Friday night after work I finally caved and grabbed some at the Seven Eleven across the street from my work. And guess what came with the ehomaki I bought - a demon mask and a package of toasted soy nuts ^.^ How cool is that?

What's even cooler is the Feng Shui compass that was attached to the box of ehomaki, because you are supposed to eat these rolls uncut facing the "lucky direction" of your zodiac. According to the ehomaki's cellophane wrapper, the lucky direction this year is north of north west, which is in between "success in life"(出世) and "love" (戀愛) on the fengshui compass. Nice!! xD

Anyway, hubby and I both took a giant bite of our ehomakis in the lucky direction for fun and promptly returned to our Mentalist episode ^.^ It was a nice Friday night ^.^