Ehomaki

So in Japan, on the last day of Winter or "Setsubun", they have a couple of traditions, just like Americans (used to) have traditions followed on "Groundhog Day". Groundhog Day is February 2nd, Setsubun is February 3rd.

There's the really old tradition of throwing beans inside homes while saying "Demons out! Luck in!" to chase out demons. They eat all sorts of beans too. Many kids around Japan including Juhee and her friends, made demon masks this past week. I'm sure Sungjae will be making a mask next year too. A parent dresses up as a demon every year on this day and runs around the preschool grounds terrorizing the kids. As with the past two years, Juhee cried when the demon was at her preschool and had trouble falling asleep at night, even knowing that God is stronger than any demons and that it was a pretend demon with a daddy inside. I really don't understand why they do this at Juhee's preschool. After all, it's a Christian preschool and not even all non-Christian preschools do it, so why do it? Why teach the little kids Bible stories and prayers to the One and Only Almighty God and then confuse them with traditions that teach the kids to think that throwing beans at demons is an effective and necessary way of chasing out demons and bringing in luck for the next year??? Especially when the Bible clearly teaches us to not play with demons!

Anyway... :///

There's a relatively new tradition in Japan for this day too, which is to make a specific type of 김밥 or makisushi rolls called "Ehomaki". I didn't know anything about it until last month, when one of the ballet moms asked all of the other moms to order "Ehomaki" through her as her friend owns a 7Eleven. The moms talked about how it wasn't something that they did when they were kids and that 7Eleven made it popular a few decades ago. The power of marketing... The start of a new "tradition"... Anyway, here's what my friend sent to me to explain the whole thing:

Ehomaki is a long sushi roll which you eat all in one on the night of Setsubun, while facing silently toward the year's “lucky” direction with your eyes closed, wishing for perfect health and praying for prosperity of business. It is said ehomaki-eating comes from men making prostitutes eat sushi for fun in the Kansai area. You make ehomaki with seven ingredients: cucumber,teriyaki eel, sweet fishflakes and kanpyo are rolled in seaweed representing the seven gods of happiness. By doing so, people hope to bring happiness into their lives.

Only five ingredients are listed above. In ours, there was a Japanese-style sweet egg roll and something pink too... I think it might have been some sort of fish egg but I'm not sure.

So I ordered a couple for our family so we could try them out and so that I can talk about the traditions concerning Setsubun, including this new one, with our kids. I've found through experience that it's better to be proactive than reactive... They are with many other adults who will guide them otherwise.

Here's part of what I wrote on facebook:

Thanks to one of Juhee's ballet friends' moms, we enjoyed a new experience today too: eating "ehomaki" on "setsubun" (Coming of Spring Day). ... You're also supposed to eat it all in one go without closing your mouth... So you don't bite off a small bite, put it down, chew, swallow, and take another bite. You chew swallow chew swallow chew swallow etc until the whole thing is gone. I ordered a "mini" and a "regular" but there was no way we could have eaten the rolls like that, even the mini one! I could see why it started as a tradition for heartless men in the Kansai region to delight in seeing prostitutes suffer as they forced them to eat these big rolls. Anyway, the origins have become mute as it's now become another way for some Japanese people to try to find more blessings in their lives, the 7 ingredients all having a special meaning, a prayer being said while eating it, facing a set direction that is supposed to bring luck for that year. We obviously didn't follow the traditions while eating it, but it made for interesting dinner conversation with the family. Even Sungjae knew that God is not pleased when people pray to other gods. And that neither eating nor facing a particular direction is necessary for our God to hear our prayers.  Thank goodness the rolls were delicious!!! 

And here's what we ate:

The wrapper explains how to unwrap it, the ingredients, nutritional info, and
which orientation to face while eating one's ehomaki.
This year's lucky direction was east-north-east.

Delicious, but definitely too big to eat without stopping. Well,
unless it was really important for you to do so...

We cut ours up into smaller pieces. Much easier to eat and share!
Sungjae didn't eat any, but the rest of us did. They were delicious. :) 

They really were delicious! In the facebook messages going back and forth after everyone ate their "ehomaki"s, the moms talked about how their kid/s did a good job eating the "ehomaki" all in one go, about how for some of the younger siblings it was their first one. One of the moms mentioned that her husband crawled in through the window that evening after work wearing a demon mask and that the one that was most frightened was their cat!

I think for many people it's now something that they do just for fun. I can't imagine people actually believing that either tradition will add any happiness to their lives or health or business prosperity for that matter... But I know that many do have false hopes in such things and that's the part that saddens me. With so much less effort, they could have so much more if they had Jesus and that their hope lies in gods that do not see, hear, or speak...

Pray with me for the people of Japan...