Happy Snowy Setsubun!

My favourite festival of the year (I can't believe it's been that long already!) is today. So don't forget to throw some beans and shout "oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi" ("monster's out, luck in").

It's customary for the person who was born in the current zodiac year to throw beans at the temple. As it's my year I thought it might be fun to go to one of the big areas in Tokyo to do this. One place today - Nakano-Sakaue - has a procession of 100 men born in the year of the rat, dressed up as pirates. That I want to see. Why wasn't I invited to join in?!

However, the snow fell quite hard last night and it's still going - we put clothes outside last night for drying and they froze. Maybe it'll be too bad to go down to the temple, but I'll stick pictures up if we do.

Happy bean-throwing!