Setsubun

What the heck is a Setsubun, you ask? That's a good question. Let me go google it... haha

Okay, for real I didn't understand what the holiday was for. Communicating specifics is still rather difficult, so sometimes I don't ask. All I knew is that we were going to throw beans and then I was going to eat 16 of them (because I'm 16 this year).

Fukumame!

As I just learned from the wikipedia article, setsubun is like a celebration of the change of seasons, and although it technically refers to the change of all four seasons, it usually refers to the spring because that is the only time it is really celebrated. Today is the last day of winter, or the eve of spring.

With the going away of winter you also throw out bad luck or things that have happened in the last year. This is why we threw the beans. The beans are dried fukumame. I'm not sure what fuku is, but mame is bean. And these are lucky beans or something. Lucky in the asian sense of things being lucky. Which I think is a little different than the western sense of luck, but it doesn't translate to anything closer.

Toru, Mie, and Wataru trowing their beans!

Me throwing fukumame.

Anyway, Then you eat the fukumame. (Different fukumame, not the same ones you just threw off your 5th floor balcony.) You eat as many fukumame as you are years old. I'm 16 so I ate 16. My host dad turned 40 today (Happy Birthday to him. I might stay up till he gets home to wish him it. It's already 11pm, so I hope he gets home soon.) so he will eat 40 of them.

Toru and Wataru

It was a fun little tradition they have. :) Wataru (7) asked if we had setsubun in America and didn't understand why not. haha. Then my host mom told him about how parents hide easter eggs with money inside on easter in america. I had told her about it before. I had to remind her that it wasn't the parents! It's the Easter Bunny! haha He asked, rather hopefully, if they did that in Japan too. My host mom just laughed. What kid wouldn't like the idea of finding money-filled eggs in the house?

We did all this after dinner. Which was sushi! :)

So, today I had off of school, but not because of setsubun. I have today and tomorrow off because they are having entrance exams for my high school. So, even though the high schoolers aren't taking exams (grade/middle schoolers are taking exams to get into this high school) we get off school. Sounds good to me!

However, because it wasn't a holiday that people get off school for, it was only my school. All my school friends had already made plans with other people or their cram schools so I had nothing to do. But, I had decided that I was at least going to get out of the house for a bit in the afternoon so my host mom could get any errands that she wanted to do done without feeling bad for leaving me alone in the house.

In the morning I got to talk on Skype with Dad, Michael, Caroline, Benjamin, Christy, and Ryan. And I got to witness Calvin's first real crawling. All thank to the magic of the internet! :) It was really nice to talk with everyone. Ryan says some of the funiest things I've ever heard. And some of the saddest:

Ryan- "Abbey, why don't you live here anymore?"
Dad- "Because she is visiting in Japan for a while."
Ryan- "Oh. I remember when you used to be here." short pause and now in the saddest little Ryan voice you can imagine, "I just want you to come home, Abbey."

aww! I'll be home in a few months. :)

After I got off the computer with them, I found my host mom just starting to make an Apple Pie! This doesn't happen very much here. Or ever since I got here. We had gotten this huge box of apples and manderine oranges from my host mom's mom the other day, and I think she wanted to use some of the apples. This was real apple pie too! From a recipe book of American recipes in Japanese. Written by an American woman. So, I helped my host mom make apple pie as we had a nice chat. I really love my host mom. I'll miss her when I change host families. When she asked what to do with the extra pie crust dough, I showed her how to make rolly pollies! She liked them a lot! And the pie was dang good too! That's funny because I didn't even like apple pie when before I came here...

While the pie was baking, we made Yakisoba for lunch. I love that stuff. After lunch I decided (with a little encouragement from dad in the morning) to go on an adventure! I decided that I wanted to go to Chinatown and have a wander around. I've been there a couple times, but I'd never really stopped in any of the shops before and I figured that would be more fun to do by myself than anything else on my new "to do/see around Yokohama and Tokyo" list. So I set off.

I knew from looking at a little map on the internet before I left the names of the closest station, and the next closest one. I was planning to go to the closest station, but it turns out that that's on the subway, not on the train line I took. So I just decided to get off at the next closest one and see if I could find it. (For those of you who don't know, this is coming from possibly the world's most directionally challenged person. And I wish I was kidding.) I get off at the station, wander through the Motomachi shopping district for a bit and then find Chinatown! Yay! So then I wandered through Chinatown for a while and took some pictures. And I looked around the different shops.

Motomachi Street. It's a pretty famous shopping district of Yokohama.


Chinatown!

A couple hours later, I was on the train home. I didn't get lost or even temporarily confused at where I was. haha. I feel so proud of myself. It was nice to get out and just walk around and see a little of the city. I plan to do it more often now. Honestly, if I do get lost it's not really a huge deal. Even with my poor Japanese skills I can ask for directions to the closest station, and from there it's easy. haha. Maybe I won't always be so directionally challenged after all. :)