Devils

So I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the world who can sweat at minus five degrees.

It's getting down to minus very cold as of late, around the minus eight degrees mark to be exact; yet I still sweat when I'm on my bike.  How is it possible for that to happen?  Admittedly it's not that cold when I'm riding my bike, but it's nowhere near sweating temperature.  HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO SWEAT IN SUB-ZERO TEMPERATURES?

Anyway, I was pelted with beans for a couple of minutes during break time.

There's a tradition to usher in the new year, involving hundreds of soy beans.  They dress up an unlucky fool, giving him the costume of a devil (notice: a, not the, they're not mental christians here) and pelt him with beans.  I don't know why they choose beans, I don't know why they do it now; I don't know.  The holiday is called 'setsubun,' (or maybe setsubon) so feel free to look it up.  They also eat a number of beans corresponding to their age.  I don't know.

With this meandering preamble completed, here are some pictures:

They also gave their peers a mask and plastic ice hockey stick, with the aim being to brutalise the  thing hanging on the stick, rather than their classmate.  It's a good job we don't do this in England.

The mask they constructed (from a paper bag, corrugated cardboard and yellow paper) kept falling off, which would render me defenceless.  This was bad for a reason I'll explain later.

That's how cool kids wear scarves.

The devils being as scary as possible.

Obviously it's apt that a foreigner is the king devil.  Being chased and bombarded with beans is a great metaphor for the average Japanese reaction to seeing a white person invade their island - combined with the devil mask, it's essentially an uncanny look into the Japanese psyche.

Cynicism aside, the whole thing was rendered farcical for a simple change that's happened fairly recently.  The tradition states beans are to be thrown.  But thrown beans create an awful mess, which is obviously a problem in a school.  The solution is simple, and one that destroys any illusion of this being an ancient tradition.

They buy the beans in small plastic bags (as you would any sweet or confectionery item).  They don't take the beans out.  They just leave them in the bags.  So they're not actually throwing beans at each other, they're throwing bags.  That just happen to be filled with beans.

Not only is the sight ridiculous, it's painful when you get hit.  That's the reason I was afraid to let the bag/hat/helmet slip, getting hit with a bag of dried beans hurts.


Alas they didn't supply a papier-mâché codpiece.