"Setsubun" literally translates as "seasonal divider" according to a Wiki article. Though one would be hard pressed to find evidence of such a thing around here because the southern end of the prefecture got hit by heavy snowfall for most of the day. How heavy? Enough so that we were approaching whiteout conditions on some stretches of Route 13. The extremely prominent 40 somthing story high apartment building in Kaminoyama was not visible from Route 13, even though it's only about 600m from the road.
Kaminoyama, Thursday morning.... At least I could see where the road goes.
As a change of pace, my student with whom I usually have online lessons with on Thursdays appeared at our school yesterday. Her husband had business to attend to in Tendo so he drove her into town. For one reason or another, she presented us with a box of desserts, maple puddings and cream puffs. That was really nice. I had a cream puff and that thing was particularly rich as far as cream puffs go in this country.
One thing my student showed me were some photos of her grandson wearing an "oni" (ogre) mask on Setsubun. Then she showed me a short video of her son wearing the oni mask and trying to scare the kids (he son also has a daughter). But the oni had to instruct his daughter to say "Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi!" (basically to drive out bad fortune and call in good fortune) and throw beans at him. At which point the granddaughter stopped before throwing the beans and exclaimed "The ogre isn't an ogre, it's father!". It took a bit more coaxing to get her to do the bean throwing. My student told this was in contrast to last year where her granddaugher was actually afraid of ogre mask dad....
