Tuesday, February 16, 2010

節分 (Setsubun)

On 3rd February, I attended a unique Japanese festival for the first time in my life: Setsubun. That day, spring officially starts and people throw beans to people wearing demon´s customs (oni). At the same time, everybody is supposed to sing a song whose translation would be: "Demons, go far away! Good luck, come home!" I took my part as oni and got badly hit by beans! ;)

Parallely, the festival is also quite official and every shrine in Japan celebrates it somehow. In Nezu jinja, the celebration consisted of people throwing presents to the participants. At the same time, the demons were gone. When they left to the shrine to pray, the demons went out and when the priests came back, the demons fleed again. That repeated for a couple times.

Some photos here:





2 comments:

Julio said...

¿Ese eres tú difrazado de oni? No se te ve muy bien. Queremos más fotos en las que quedes en ridículo.

Alvaro said...

Jajaja. no no... ese es un oni pofesional ;) Yo me puse una careta en mi casa y el sobrino de Naoko me tiro judias de esas! por suerte no hay fotos ni videos!!