Bean Scattering Ceremony

On February 3rd I attended a traditional Japanese Bean Scattering Ceremony at a shrine near our apartment. The ceremony is preformed to provide good luck in the coming year. Having heard that the Japanese has very methodical and strict ceremonies, I was interested in seeing how one played out. I was told that the ceremony would start at noon and at 12:30 I could scatter beans for my own good luck. I left the apartment at 11:35 and arrived at 12:05. Contrary to the length of time I traveled, the shrine is only a 5 minute walk from the apartment. The problem was that there are several areas around our apartment that might appear to be a shrine to a none shrine aficionado like myself. Fortunately for me the ceremony didn’t actually start until 12:30. Well, not so fortunately as that left 25 minutes to stand in one spot and wait with 50 some other Japanese people. I could see as the time ticked closer to 12:30 that the crowd was getting excited (in a quiet calm Japanese way – in the US you probably wouldn’t have even noticed). All 50, or so, of us were lined up on a side walk in front of a red arch with a banner barricading us from passing through it. At 12:30 a woman on the other side of the banner removed a cloth, covering a table full of small packages. I couldn’t see it clearly so I assumed this would be the beans to be scattered.

What happened next will stay with me always. To set it up I want to explain a little bit about what I have seen regarding Japanese behavior/social etiquette. I have not seen a Japanese individual raise their voice above a conversational level (in any situation). I have not seen them push or even nudge each other in very very crowded areas. They tend to be very polite and always calm in nature. So at 12:30 about 7 Japanese men in kimonos walked up to the banner from the other side and the crowd got very excited and then… the men in kimonos started throwing candy, beans, and sweets into the crowd. The crowd went nuts trying to grab as much of the thrown items as they could. This lasted for around 10minutes. I saw one woman with 2 large handfuls of goodies at the end. After the 10 minutes the crowd very calmly walked away. I included a picture of my gathered goodies from the event.