Yesterday was a day known as Setsubun in Japan. To celebrate this, we have a ritual where we throw beans into the rooms of our houses and shout ‘Demons out, fortune in’.
We also stick an ornament made of the head of a sardine and the leaf of a Hiiragi, holly to door posts or gate ways.
This year, to further improve our luck and prosperity, we also put up an Omamori, lucky charm, on the wall facing south in our office. These Omamori can only be attached to the wall, at midnight, of 3 different days. These are known as Toji (the shortest day of the year), Omisoka (the last day of the year) and on Setsubun (3rd of February).
The Omamori in our office comes from Ana Hachimangu shrine, in Tokyo. It is said that when they broke the ground to build this shrine, a cave was discovered, in which they found a statue of Amida-buddha. This was seen as a good omen and thus the shrine was named ‘Ana; cave, Hachimangu. To this day many people still come to this shrine to pray for luck and prosperity.
With this, I would like to wish all our subscribers, friends and customers the best of luck and good health for the remainder of the year.