00:00 John Daub: With holidays that just boggle the foreign mind. One of them is this holiday right now, called Setsubun (節分, bean-throwing festival), which happens on the third of February every year. In many ways, this Setsubun is sort of like Groundhog Day. It's just one of those holidays that is a seasonal divide. And that's what Setsubun means—it means seasonal divide. Bun meaning partition.

00:25 John Daub: I remember coming to Japan 20 years ago and then seeing these demon masks and beans and big fat sushi. And I thought, what the heck is this? It's Setsubun. I'm not really good at explaining all of the traditional stuff, and in fact, I don't want to bore you with it. I'm going to tell you the important details. February 3rd every year, it's like Groundhog Day and we use it to get rid of winter.

00:55 John Daub: Families in Japan buy these beans called fukumame (福豆, fortune beans). Usually there's a paper demon mask that comes with it. The head of the household, usually the guy or the husband—poor guy—he's got to wear the demon mask. And the kids throw these beans at him and chase him out of the house. And they say, "Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi" (鬼は外、福は内), which means out with the demons, in with good luck, in with good fortune. They want to get rid of the demons and bring spring more quickly. At least that's my version of it.

01:38 John Daub: Now, it's also famous for something really weird. Every year I go to the supermarket and I see these big, fat sushi called futomaki (太巻き, fat rolls). Originally this tradition comes from Osaka. It has almost no traditional relationship with the holiday, at least that's what I understand. So, I'm going to take you into the supermarket like stealth, because you're not technically allowed to film inside supermarkets. But I'm going to take you inside and take a look at some of this futomaki, and you can see how weird this holiday is to first-timers.

02:14 John Daub: You're supposed to eat this big fat sushi in the lucky direction that your zodiac sign points to. I have no idea which direction that is. I'm going to buy one and eat it with you, and I guess we'll just figure it out. But let's go inside the supermarket. Here's the demon. And there's the sushi. Wow, these are big.

03:27 John Daub: This one looks good. This one has a lot of stuff inside of it. So there's just a ton of them. And the supermarket guy, he's putting out more. Check it out—he's got pallets of them. They've got tons that they're putting out. So these are the futomaki they have for this. Oh, this is like fried inside it—fried pork. Oh, this is a red demon. All right, I'm going to get these two. We're going to go outside and try it. This is a pretty cool holiday.

04:53 John Daub: They had demon bread at the bakery, but it's all sold out. Let's go outside. All right, we're back. So I have here two futomaki. This one cost me $5—you gotta be kidding me. It's pretty big. Inside it has maguro tuna, egg, cucumber, and shrimp. Oh, it looks really good. And the other one I bought is like a pork cutlet inside wrapped in rice. That's pretty cool, right? And both of them have the devil on it—this one has a red devil and this one has a blue devil.

05:57 John Daub: All right, let's open this up. We're going to go with the traditional sushi first. I don't know what direction I'm supposed to eat this in. Apparently you're supposed to find the direction—this is a big deal in Japan. You can see the supermarket advertisement has all the deals, all the coupons. And this is Setsubun—there you can see the third, which is a Saturday today. There's a bunch of different kinds of sushi you can buy at the supermarket today. Look at the devil eating the sushi—he's playing it like a tuba.

06:34 John Daub: Now we're going to eat it—this is my dinner time. So this one has shrimp in it. Oh, it looks good. They've put the soy sauce and wasabi inside. Yeah, the wasabi is inside the little packaging. This is big—look at this, it's got some volume to it. A lot of people make this at home, but it's just easier with the supermarket. I kind of eat mine like this. Here we go.

07:40 John Daub: We're supposed to go in a certain direction and eat this. So I guess we're supposed to go in a certain direction. I'm going to go this way—this seems like a very unlucky direction because it's pointed to a bunch of traffic. All right, here we go. This thing is massive. You can see the egg, the cucumber, the maguro, the shrimp—all in there. It's very colorful.

08:18 John Daub: Pointing this way, kind of a boring holiday unless you have some people to chase with the demon mask. Once again, this is the fukumame. Like I was saying earlier, the head of the household—usually the husband or the father—will wear the paper demon mask, and the rest of the family will take these beans and chase him out of the house throwing beans at him. You can see in all the apartment complexes outside the front door there's always beans scattered like all crushed on the ground—that's because they've done the ritual where they chase the devils out.

09:10 John Daub: Now I'm gonna eat this one, which is the sauce katsu pork version. This is more of a modern-day invention—a really beautiful-looking pork cutlet surrounded by a massive roll of maki sushi. Here we go—good, they put the sauce around the katsu. This is awesome. Mmm.

10:09 John Daub: The one with the maguro and fish, egg, cucumber, and shrimp was about five dollars, and this one with the pork cutlet was about three dollars. Both of them are really good—I'm eating it on the street. And this you can get for about a dollar fifty, depending on the quality of the beans you want. You can eat these—they taste like plain roasted soybeans. That's what they are.

10:47 John Daub: This holiday is only on February 3rd—it's equivalent to Groundhog Day. And as I explained at the beginning, Setsubun means the seasonal division between winter and spring. Chase the demons out—there's a good chance that winter might be over soon. It's not gonna be—in fact, we have something called sankanshion (三寒四温, three days cold four days warm) in Japan. A lot of the younger people might not know this phrase, but it means it'll go three days cold, four days warm, three days cold, four days warm, and this pattern for like two or three weeks, then spring will break. So winter sticks around a little bit longer.

11:31 John Daub: You know, when April 15th hits, that's pretty much spring here in Japan. It's amazing how the weather—like September 1st, all the hot air goes away and it just becomes fall in Japan. I don't know how they do it, but for 20 years of living in Japan, it's been like this—it's pretty consistent. When April 1st comes around, it gets pretty warm—you can feel spring is here. April 1st—it's just amazing how the divisions are so clear, like on the day almost.

11:59 John Daub: So there you have it—that's it for today's episode of the day. I hope you enjoyed it. It's not really an impressive holiday, but it was one holiday when I first came to Japan that confused the heck out of me. And now I know it's about eating and chasing the demons and spring—you know, that kind of stuff. So I hope you like this little introduction and the behind-the-scenes in the supermarket—I thought that was fun. If you have any questions, write them in the comments below. Subscribe and see you on the next live stream, everybody. Happy Setsubun.