Ehou, ehou, there's nothing else I can say

(Are Lady Gaga album tracks a bit obscure for title puns? Perhaps.)

When I woke up this morning to the sound of my kerosene heater roaring into life (working out how to set the timer on it was one of the smartest moves of my life), I had no idea that there was anything special about February 3rd. It's not a public holiday or anything. But it turns out that it is setsubun, a minor celebration that could perhaps be considered analogous to the Western pancake day. Given Japan's fondness for bizarre and elaborate rituals, it should come as no surprise that it's a little more complex than merely making very flat cakes.

My first tip off came in the form of my school lunch. Actually, the most unusual thing about school lunch today was that it featured a delicious creme caramel dessert make by the third graders in home economics. But also included in school lunch was a little packet of dried beans in a sugary coating (the beans, not the packet). Fellow teachers were trying to tell me there was something significant about the beans, along the lines that they were to be used as ammunition against monsters. I didn't see any kids using the beans as projectiles, so I followed their lead and simply ate them. Confused, I headed off to city hall for my usual wednesday afternoon face-time.

The good thing about being at city hall is that I have access to the internet. So I decided to find out what the hell was going on. I typed "japan february bean throwing" into Google, and was very surprised to see that the second hit was none other than my predecessor's blog. I soon ascertained that on this day, either the head of the family or someone whose Chinese zodiac sign matches the current year (i.e. someone whose age is a multiple of 12) wears a mask designating them as a demon. These rest of the family hurl dried soy beans at them until they are driven from the house, chanting "oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi" as they do so. This translates to something like "Demon out! Good luck in!". I think you then pick up the beans and eat a number equal to your age. Given that Japan has the highest life expectancies in the world, this means that a whole lot of beans presumably get eaten. It's a shame I live alone.

But that's not all! It is also customary to eat ehou-maki today. This is a particularly fat sushi roll, containing precisely seven fillings (seven being a lucky number seems to be some sort of universal truth). Normally futomaki (thick rolls) are cut into slightly-larger-than-bite-size pieces, but not ehou-maki, since cutting up a lucky symbol will of course truncate your good fortune. When you come to eat your sushi baton (an action which I could have happily watched the office secretary mime all afternoon), you must face in the lucky direction. This changes every year; this year it is west-south-west. As you eat the ehou-maki, you make a wish. You must remain silent until you have finished eating it, or else the wish will not come true (pun relevance bonus!).

Well, clearly I wanted some of this action. I remembered that my local supermarket had decorated their sushi area with demonic faces recently, but I hadn't thought anything of it at the time. So I decided to swing by on my way home. As I strolled towards the sushi, I was greeted by a number of employees, one of whom had a radio mic hooked up to the store's PA system. This in itself is not so unusual; I have seen this kind of aggressive marketing of convenience foods a couple of times. However, I was not expecting to be beckoned over, and to have a long sushi roll thrust into my hand. It appeared to be six fillings short, only containing kanpyou, the bland brown vegetable found in the very cheapest convenience store sushi. But it was free, so I shouldn't carp. The supermarket workers pointed at a big red arrow on the floor, which had on it some kanji I could actually read: west, south, and west again. I aligned myself with the arrow, and started silently chomping on the maki. Thank the lord I had done my research on setsubun - if I hadn't I would have been three times as confused as this.

When I finished, the mic-wielding ring-leader tried to conduct a little interview with me. I explained that I couldn't speak Japanese, so she just said "dream" in English, and thrust the mic back in my face. I didn't know what to say, so I just apologised and scurried away. Thinking about it now, she must have been asking what I wished for - I guess the taboo about disclosing wishes doesn't exist here. I should have said "nihongo ga jouzu ni naritai desu" - "I want to become good at Japanese" - but as usually happens when someone talks to me in Japanese, I think approximately 20 times too slowly to respond.