Bean Counter

So.  It's been a while.  January was a hard, cold month for me.  I was feeling homesick and just plain sick not to mention cold.  I had my second snow day ever as a teacher.  I was pretty pathetic - I had two posts I was sitting on, but neither came to fruition because I was in such a funk.  But now it's February, and that changes everything.

My good friend Sensei was teaching her Japanese class in my art room (because that's how crowded we are in the school) one day last week, when I heard a word I recognized, oni.  And then I heard Setsubun, which is a holiday and when Flower Boy said our cold spell was due to be broken, and after a quick search on them interwebs I realized it was this weekend!  I had to reschedule my nihonga painting class, because if I was there at 1 I couldn't be at any of the festivities throughout the city, but suddenly I had a subject for my first painting (all of which I'll tell you about eventually, but this post is for Setsubun...we'll save nihonga for a proper art post).

Once that was settled, I had to pick a celebration to attend.  Setsubun can be celebrated at home, by throwing dried soybeans at a family member wearing the oni, or ogre, mask.  This duty (or is it a privilege?) usually falls to the dad, but mine is in Iowa, and knowing him, pelting him with lucky beans would count as an invitation to annihilate us with flatulence.  So I looked through my sources to choose a festivity to attend.  Ikegami's known for wrestlers, and Senso-ji has a shichifukujin dance.  Gototen in Ueno uses chrysanthemum leaves instead of beans, while apparently plenty of celebrities go to Zojo-ji.  All of which was very well and good, but in the end I decided to go to a little temple in Setagaya called Shinryu-ji.

What made their Setsubun special was that instead of the red-skinned, black-haired oni in a tigerskin loincloth (the traditional face of the holiday), their procession features tengu, a kind of crow demon.  Being the otome that I am, with the interests that I have, there was really no choice.  I walked down the lanes from Shimo-Kitazawa station til I found the temple, where according to legend a tengu is enshrined.  Since they are thought to live on the mountains, and Shimo-Kitazawa seemed hilly at best, I found myself wondering if this was likely, but hell - they'd probably wonder what a white-skinned, red-haired foreign demon was doing here, too.  Who am I to judge?

It was just a little past one when I got to the quiet little temple.  The mikoshi was sitting to the side, a huge red face with a long, red nose its most prominent feature.  It wasn't too crowded yet, and the "pre-game" ceremony seemed to have just started, while attendants were still getting ready.  I've got enough festivals under my belt now to think this is the way to do it - show up early so you're already in place when the action starts.

The ceremony involved some chanting by a monk, possibly the head monk - he was old and well-dressed, so that would be my guess, anyways.  He had an accordion-folded  book of sutras that he flipped open and closed as he chanted, eventually flipping it all the back and shutting it as he finished his chant or his prayer.  There were lots of official looking people, men and women in suits, in addition to the regular temple attendants.  After the head monk finished and shuffled out of view, these came to the front of the temple porch, with their sake boxes full of fukumame.  There was some drumming and shouts, and they threw their beans out into the crowd, thrice if I'm not mistaken.  I was way too far back to catch any, but I figured my time would come, so I just stood in the back, enjoying the slightly warmer weather and the atmosphere of the day, keeping an eye on my surroundings so I'd be ready for whatever happened next.  (I say that, but actually I still missed it when they moved the mikoshi down the hill to the street running perpendicular.  Those tengu can be sneaky, I guess).

After a little more pomp and circumstance, they took their show on the road.  I let myself be swept out to the entrance to the temple grounds, where I had the misfortune of standing next to some other gaijin. They were talking about how everyone was taking so many pictures of their baby, which just about made me barf.  The woman kept asking her husband if he was taking pictures, and THEN one of the tengu started walking towards us, and she started talking about how she thought it was a medieval plague mask.

It's possible that one of the reasons why Hozuki is my favorite character is the fact that he freely beats on idiots.  He's kind of the animated embodiment of my id.

The procession came all the way down the hill to the street, and I went along behind it, trying to get some better pictures when the English speakers in the crowd weren't driving me batshit crazy with their culturally incorrect discussions...

This is the tengu they were talking about, by the way.  That looks nothing like a plague mask.  I could cross my eyes and let them go out of focus and it STILL wouldn't look like a plague mask.  Baka gaijin. 

I caught up and enjoyed the sounds of the drums (not taiko...in fact, I'm not sure I've seen any taiko since moving here, which is sad.  Maybe I'll have to look up the taiko lab in Tokyo...) and the conch shells being blown.  I also really loved seeing the traditional clothes up close.  Many of them were wearing a kind of kimono with a stiff shoulder line, and I caught myself a few times wanting to reach out and touch it to see how they made them stand up...was there a rod in that fold?  Lots of starch?  I probably could have gotten away with looking up their sleeves, but for some reason it never occurred to me...possibly because even subconsciously I knew that was a weirdo thing to do.

Finally the Big Boss tengu made his way past, with all of his coterie.  The mask and clothes were impressive, of course, but the real marvel was his shoes!  The geta seemed to be about 6 inches off the ground, and had only a single stilt underneath.  He kept one hand on the shoulder of the attendant in front of him, presumably to help him keep his balance.  As I told my mother one time, I can't help falling down in normal shoes...these would be a lost cause!

As the mikoshi was pulled past, the caboose of the train, I noticed I was standing next to a cupcake shop that looked very promising.  I was just thinking about going in and checking out their wares when half a block down the street the parade started throwing packets of fukumame.  You're supposed to eat one bean for each year of your age for good luck, and although I did complete the shichifukujin meguri just last month, I didn't want to leave anything to chance.  2018 needs to be a banner year.  So I sumimasen-ed my way up to the side of the parade, and walked along beside for a while, until the procession halted and the beans were thrown again.  I managed to grab 3 packs and was given another by a kind Japanese lady who must have thought I needed them.  I didn't count to see if I made it to 38...I was too busy making sure I didn't pass the cupcake shop.