Today Keiko and I celebrated Setsubun, the day before the beginning of Spring in Japan. Setsubun is celebrated yearly in Japan on February 3 as part of the Spring Festival and involves a special ritual to cleanse away all the evil of the former year and drive away evil spirits for the year to come. This special ritual is called mamemaki (literally “bean throwing”) also is accompanied by the sharing of a special sushi roll and sake.

We opened a very special bottle of Sake given to us by our good friend Kase after we climbed Mt. Fuji together.  The sake was made with the waters from the mountain.