Setsubun

Although Kyoto is still shimmered with cold, some shrines are preparing for the coming spring and the festival that welcomes spring called setsubun on February the 2nd and 3rd. The shrine in the vicinity of Kyoto University, called Yoshida shrine is famous for it’s setsubun. Especially because the performance of the devils and the casting them away with beans is said to be still resembling how it was performed in former times. The devils represent all the evil one accumulated during the year and by ousting it all out, one enters the new year again with a pure heart. Some of my teachers were quite enthusiastic about it and recommended every one of us to go and see it. It was hard to miss, because the road in front of the main entrance where usually some 5 obentou (lunchboxes) sellers stand, was now covered with stands offering all kinds foods to the huge crowd that decided to ignore the rainy snow and climb up the temple to have a look what’s going on. Those stands you can find around any bigger temple and they are always offering the same kind of foods, yakisoba, yakiniku, chocobanana’s, food that should resemble French pancakes. Nice of course, but not very exciting. I must admid that I missed the real performance by the devils so I perhaps missed the real interesting part. Although standing in the row to buy something from of those stands, one devil had a go at me and But I went to the burning of all the omamori that were bought last year and which protecting charm had faded away over the year, making it necessary to buy them anew. The whole inner yard of the temple was cramped with people, and the paper and wood caught surprisingly fast fire although it was still lightly snowing. Although for me the whole festival wasn't as exciting nor really traditional as it was said to be still a huge crowd came to the shrine, even from neighbouring cities just to see the festival. Somehow, I had the feeling I had seen similar things before and I missed a kind of individual flavour to the whole festival. And strangely enough individual flavour is something one comes across quite often, at café’s and bars. One characteristic is that they are almost always very small giving room to only 30 people at most for a bar. But it also gives them a kind of intimacy, as if you know the people who are inside, a kind of living room feel. And not the kind of living room feel many café’s try to embody in their establishment, but really the feeling as if you are in their living room. One of the reasons is that usually the place is connected with the room where the owners live. If you just go through one door, you are in the middle of their lives. A feeling that not only comes over me when visiting a café, but also going into the second-hand bookshops as well as when I am buying fresh vegetables. And sometimes you can see the family sitting in their living room. Because so many establishments give are expressing their owners taste in both interior as well as music, the nightlife is quite differentiated. You can find bars specialized in heavy metal, hard rock of the 70’s, bubbling r&b, tribal techno, roots reggae and dub across the nightlife district. And I hope that with the coming of spring more people decide to turn a space into a nice cafe or bar, hopefully fulling a new spring of individual expression.