Setsubun day

On February 3rd, there is a special day in Japan called Setsubun. Actually, it setsubun refers to the start of each season, but the start of spring day has special traditions associated with it. It seems a bit early for the start of spring, but oh well. Below you can see the materials needed to celebrate Setsubun:
At lunch time, we ate eho-aki (lucky direction roll). This is more of a regional tradition from Osaka area but we thought we would try it. Ayako made a large sushi roll with 7 ingredients inside. We then had to face north-east (this year's lucky direction) while eating the sushi roll. We had to eat it all at once without stopping and while remaining silient.
It was a bit difficult and I couldn't enjoy the sushi roll as much as I would have normally. Here's Ayako eating here eho-maki:
We decided afterwards that it was fun to try but we won't be doing it next year.
The next part was at nighttime, when demons might visit your house. We had a box of soybeans that we used for this. I opened the door and threw out two handfulls of soybeans while shouting "Demons out" in Japanese, and then quickly shutting the door so the demons can't get in:
Next, I threw two handfulls of soybeans inside while shouting "Luck in" in Japanese:
As part of the fun, I also put on the demon mask that came with out pack of soybeans:
I had heard my students talking about this tradition last year, so I was glad to have tried doing it this year.