鬼は外!福は内!： Devils out! Fortune in!

Yesterday I celebrated the day of Setsubun [節分：せつぶん], the division between one season and the next, in this case winter to spring, with my elementary school students. The spring is, I think, based on dates from the Lunar Calendar rather than the divisions of the four seasons according to the Gregorian Calendar.

To mark the occasion of Setsubun, I participated in mame-maki [豆撒き:まめまき] for the first time. Mame-maki consists of throwing beans while chanting “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!” [鬼は外！福は内！: おにはそと！ふくはうち！] ‘Oni‘ refers to devils, in this case evil spirits and misfortune in general, while ‘soto‘ is the outside. ‘Fuku‘ is understood to be the opposite of misfortune (closer to “luck,” “good fortune,” etc), while ‘uchi‘ refers to the inside, such as one’s home. The general idea being that one throws beans at devils to chase them away from one’s home, while welcoming luck to enter. This usually involves someone playing the part of the ‘oni’ while wearing an appropriate devil mask.

At the school, we participated in mami-maki with the third and fourth graders, A-san (one of the non-JET ALTs from Minamitane), and the homeroom teacher at the end of the 4th period English lesson. Half the class volunteered to be oni and have peanuts and small snack pouches of beans thrown (lightly) at them. Then they switched. Children of this age are decidedly worked up about throwing things, and dodging them!

Mami-maki with the fifth and sixth graders during 5th period was a little more violent. Kids at this age are strong! A-san, half of the class, and I were the “oni.” Although the teacher told them not to throw hard, they seemed to get pretty into it. We, the oni, were kind of “beaned!” XD

Overall, it was a fun and new experience. I’ve never had the chance to throw food at people as part of a celebration!

More info:
> Setsubun at the Japanese Wikipedia site.
> Setsubun at the English Wikipedia site.

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お互いの距離 :: Keeping the safe distance safe

Lately I have been thinking about that infamous equation,

[1] Man + Woman = Sex.

The meaning of that equation is that once a male and a female feel sufficiently close to each other, assuming they are both heterosexual, they will move to a more physical relationship. Naturally, heterosexual people who are also believers of that equation would tend to be against homosexual relationships because such a relationship, namely

[2] ( Man + Man ) OR ( Woman + Woman ) = Sex

is unacceptable to the believer.
But that is a digression.

I really hate equation [1]. I would like to believe that the reason I might feel romantic stirrings toward a male friend and not toward a female friend is not merely because he’s male and she’s not. (Obviously, having never had strong romantic inclinations toward any of my female friends, it’s likely I’m not ever going to have such inclinations in the future.) But really, I do wonder about the factors that keep, say, a “straight” male and female friend from feeling like they want to be “more than friends” when they do become very good friends. With all the noise and garbage from the media these days, one would hardly think it’s possible to stay “just friends.” And what is that phrase, “just friends,” supposed to mean anyway? People in the Shakespearean era, and myself, believed that a pure friendship having no physical component was just as good as if not better than one that did. The idea of a completely pure friendship on a plane deeper and more meaningful than a physical relationship could ever be — the kind of friendship that people attempted to portray in the Lord of the Rings, but failed, because people today cannot understand or conceive of such a relationship — is very valuable to me. It’s not “just” friendship.

And yet, such a friendship does not excite the kind of passion that captures people’s imaginations when they think of romantic engagements. I guess the physical instinct is stronger than most things, particularly abstract philosophical ideas.

But I keep digressing. Mainly, I just want to know the secret that differentiates the desire for “just” friendship and “more than” friendship. It would really help the endless stream of people who get their hearts broken over one-sided longings. And I’ll admit it. Someone like me, who always sees the possibilities in things, could use some help in shutting down the “what ifs.” “What if I had the possibility of being in a relationship with this friend that’s better than the one I’m in?” –The most dangerous kind of thought. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I imagine being in relationships with other people when I’m currently in one. But the possibility exists. It even happened once, which was really a big mistake. When you try to stop being in a perfectly good relationship to pursue some hypothetical ideal which in fact does not exist, that’s a bad sign. Moreover, if the pain incurred from the breakup outweighs any happiness you could gain, hypothetical or otherwise, well, that just doesn’t add up. But then, you don’t know how happy you could be in a relationship unless you are in one. It’s not like you could know whether you’ve made a mistake or actually found the love of your life until some time has passed. Meaning is something we invent and assign to things as they enter the domain of past-tense. In a mini-max, strictly logical kind of world, maybe you could try out being in a relationship with everyone you’d possibly have an interest in, then go with the one that maximizes happiness and minimizes unhappiness. But feelings don’t work that way, the world is not strictly logical, pigs don’t fly, and happiness isn’t something you can really quantify anyway.

A bad one

Lately the two lovebirds at my parents’ place keep chewing on their nest. It’s gotten so bad that there are three holes in the nest, and the roof of it sort of sags because the structure is disintingrating.

Is this what they call “eating oneself out of house and home”? XD