せ：せつぶん Setsubun 2012

Don’t forget this Friday, February 3rd is a Japanese holiday called Setsubun. I posted about Setsubun last year HERE and HERE (click to see lots of fun activities and printables!).  It is a great way to chase out evil and invite happiness into your home for 2012! (If you are eating eho-maki, the direction to face this year is north-north-west).

New for this year: Enjoytokyo.jp has cute printable oni masks HERE.  I especially like this disco-oni!

image from enjoytokyo.jp

Who usually ends up playing the part of “oni” in your family? In ours, we all take turns. And instead of throwing beans, we throw mini marshmallows… less chance of someone getting hurt!

Setsubun 節分（せつぶん）

fumira.jp

February 3rd of next week is a Japanese holiday called “Setsubun”. Setsubun celebrates the end of winter and welcomes spring. It is a fun holiday to celebrate, especially if you have children. Here are some activities you can do:

1) On the night of Setsubun, it is tradition to throw beans and yell “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!” meaning “Ogres out! Fortune/Good Luck In!”(read more here). Traditionally, roasted soy beans are thrown, but I read peanuts can be used as well. One person can dress up like an ogre and others can throw beans at him/her. You can make your own ogre mask here (from Glico), here (Canon creative park) or here (surfies.net). In our Japanese playgroup, we throw balls/beans at ogres made out of boxes. The kids love it!

2) You can make origami Oni and Fuku here, from origami-club.

3) Another tradition that I just learned about, is to eat makizushi (rolled sushi):

“It is customary now to eat uncut makizushi called Eho-Maki (恵方巻) (lit. “lucky direction roll”) in silence on Setsubun while facing the yearly lucky compass direction, determined by the zodiac symbol of that year.”- from wikipedia.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

fumira.jp

4) Read more about Setsubun:

In English, here (wikipedia).

In Japanese, here (wikipedia) and here (kidsnet).

5) I thought this Sasae-san episode was very informative about Setsubun. (No.5981「タラちゃん鬼は外」)

(What is Sazae-san?)

6) In our playgroup, we decorated paper cups with stickers, pen, and yarn to make Oni (they became our bean-holders):

hiraganamama.wordpress.com

Easy-peasy for the toddler crowd. Any other fun ideas?

Next year, I want to make this oni game.

See my post about ONI for even more resources!