Setsubun With Amo-san

On our previous visit at Hattori Shrine for the festival of God Ebisu, we were informed of the Setsubun festival. We decided to visit Hattori Shrine again this month with Amo-san.
We loaded him in his buggy from back when he was a puppy.

On our way to Hattori Shrine, some posters about the Setsubun festival caught our attention. There were some famous names mentioned on the poster, such as Kunishige Kamamoto, the advisor of the Japan Football Association. Hiroko Ogura, the electone player of a Saturday morning news program had her name issued as well.

We entered the shrine from the west gate.

At the west gate, there was a signboard concerning the exorcising ceremony, which we didn’t make it by 2 pm. However, we did make it by the bean distribution that starts at 2:30.

We happened to pass by a stone pillar with Kamamoto’s name on it while we were going to the wide square.

Some lucky sushi rolls were on sale at the east side of the square.

While we were waiting for the distribution, we had Amo-san take photos with shrine maidens and the shrine ambassadors.

One of the maidens was mentioned in our 76th article. (file76 New Year’s Fes 2020 Part I)

This is Hiroko Ogura, the electone player.

Amo-san with the three together.

Lots of other maidens and ambassadors delightfully accepted to take photos with Amo-san.

Amo-san’s eyes were glittering with wonder when the bean distribution was about to start.

Amo-san was eager to know what was going on…

… until people started crowding the place and terrifying him that he wanted to run away.

After this, we decided to observe from a distance of when the distribution was starting.

The square was full of people in a blink of an eye!

The king of soccer, Kunishige Kamamoto was participating in passing out the beans.

The second bean distribution came to an end.

After passing out the beans, it was time for the maidens to have a break.

Here are some more maidens who cooperated in taking some photos with us. The lady in the center of this photo is Azumi Iizuka, a former maiden of this shrine and currently a musical actress.

There were lots of people taking photos with demons.

Some children were crying, but many were having fun with the demons.

We found four sushi rolls left as we headed east so we could go home.

We purchased all of them and had them later in our office. Our thoughts? We’ll get to that later.

The maidens and the ambassadors rang some bells since we were the lucky ones who got the last four.

During our way home, some maidens and demons were patrolling in front of Hattori-Tenjin Station of the Hankyu line.

When we came back to our office, we immediately opened the sushi rolls.

We shared the sushi roll so everybody can have it, and lots of the ingredients inside were incredible!

Thanks for reading!