Beans, beans, demons and happiness!

We celebrated osetsubun in our Japanese elective class today. Yes, about three weeks late. Without telling any student what I was doing, I picked up a handful of beans, walked over to the door, hollered "Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi" and threw my beans outside onto the sidewalk.

I told the students to go Google "oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi" to see what I had just done.

They discovered that I was throwing out the demons and bringing in happiness as part of the transition to Spring. They found out that Japanese people eat beans on osetsubun for good luck, one bean for every year and an extra bean for the upcoming year.

I gave them jelly beans instead ... but they had to eat them with chopsticks.

One of videos shows Nick messing up the saying and throwing out happiness and bringing in demons. I sure hope the four other people who went after him got rid of all the demons by saying the expression correctly!