Celebrating Setsubun in New York

Today was Spring Setsubun, so a Japanese reporter in New York had a local sushi restaurant prepare him a traditional ehou maki (“lucky direction roll”):

As he went to Times Square and ate the roll facing East-North-East (2009′s lucky direction), people stopped to watch him. It took a total of 3 minutes to successfully eat the roll without stopping.
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10 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - February 3, 2009 at 8:14 pm

Categories: Japanese Food Tags:

leitmotiv

GAIJIN DA!!
yagi

I do not want you to misunderstand it first of all.
A lot of Japanese do not have such a tradition.
It is only Osaka and a Kansai region.
マスコミは嘘を撒き散らすなよ‥
Watson Waterstone

And they say Americans eat too much… XD
joshing

I do not want you to misunderstand it first of all.
A lot of Japanese do not have such a tradition.
It is only Osaka and a Kansai region.
マスコミは嘘を撒き散らすなよ‥

^^Not exactly true. Just check the sushi-ya’s on Setsubun. If they are selling ehou-maki, that means people must be eating them. I’m in Tokyo and I ate one yesterday. My GF is from Ishikawa and she did too. But, yeah, its much more prevalent in Kansai.
マスコミは嘘を撒き散らすなよ‥　＜－－当然です。＾＾

LF: The reaction of the guy with the knit cap in the video is ppppricelesss… roffle.

http://www.japanprobe.com James

It seems to me that supermarkets were aggressively marketing ehou-maki before the マスコミ made a big topic out of it.

http://whatjapanthinks.com Ken Y-N

I didn’t translate this survey:

http://release.center.jp/2009/01/2702.html

that shows about 70% in Kansai versus 30% in Kanto planning on eating it.

I went to Hankyu in Umeda, Osaka last night after work to pick up some salad, and the queues at every stall selling ehou maki were horrendous, worse than Xmas Eve for strawberry shortcake!
ponta

Right. I didn’t know this custom until this year somebody gave me a futomaki at setsubun. I live in tokyo.　For me Setubun is the time when people call out, “oni wa soto and fuku wa uchi”.

1977年に大阪海苔問屋協同組合が道頓堀で行った海苔の販売促進行事などが契機となって、復活することとなった。・・・・
商業的に売り上げの落ちる1月後半～2月初旬の販売イベントとして、主にコンビニエンスストアを中心として各地で展開。ファミリーマートが先駆けであり、1983年に大阪府と兵庫県で販売が開始された [2]。1989年には広島県のセブン-イレブンも販売を開始し、その後販売エリアを拡大し、1998年に全国展開をしたことで急速に普及した[3]

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/恵方巻

http://www.japanprobe.com James

Yep, that’s what most people associate with it. I posted about that aspect for last year’s Setsubun ( http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=3713 ), but this year I thought I’d do a post about ehou-maki, which seems to be gaining in popularity lately.
The Overthinker

My local Jusco actually has a direction marker on the floor beside the sales area so you can check.

The Overthinker

Ishikawa follows Kansai in many ways – it’s a lot closer, after all.

Celebrating Setsubun in New York

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