setsubun no hi

so yesterday was setsubun no hi, which i never heard of before. it is a really weird custom! interesting though... we did some stuff for setsubun like one person wears an "oni" (ogre) mask, and one person wears a "fuku" (goodluck, but it is a chubby lady's face who has two blue dots on her forehead) and in ESS, we threw beans at the person wearing the oni mask and said "oni wa soto" or "out with the devil" and then we say "fuku wa uchi" which is "in with goodluck". you're also supposed to throw them outside your house, which is like getting the badluck out. and then you have to eat your age in beans. so yesterday, i ate 23. some of the beans are good, like iso peanuts and some are pretty dry, like something not so good. oh, and this morning, walking down the stairs of my apartment, i saw all these beans so i guess everyone does it! but yeah, last night we threw the beans at steve and nao's place, and also had tempura that they cooked in a little fryer in the middle of the table and then we ate it as soon as it came out, and it was so good! i think we gotta get one of those!
tomorrow we are going to hokkaido for the snow festival. should be good! i'll put up the pictures when i get back.