The snow came and went faster than a fleeting thought on a cold February morning. Despite the chill, a very famous festival is set to take place across Japan in two days’ time, known as Setsubun. The festival involves throwing roasted beans at demons and marks the penultimate day of winter, according to the Japanese lunar calendar. However, it doesn’t feel like spring is coming anytime soon; outside, it is cold, and patches of frozen white snow cover the city of Tokyo. Perhaps it will stay this way for another two months, or perhaps the unpredictability of Japanese weather will strike again.

The bean-throwing festival will be taking place at most of the temples and shrines in Japan. However, I have decided not to attend. Instead, a group of performing artists, some of whom have been featured in my previous posts, and a couple of whom I have randomly become friends with, are celebrating Setsubun in a very different way—with comedy, clowns, and plenty of balloons.

I arrive just as the event starts. It begins with a man dressed as a ninja performing tricks. He jumps over chairs, stacks some chairs, balances on chairs (his performance very much focused on seating), before being randomly attacked by a man wearing a sheep costume. The sheep man throws a single bean at the ninja; he overreacts in a classic comedy style before falling over and playing dead for the remainder of the proceedings. The sheep man has a costume made up entirely of balloons, the handiwork of my balloon artist friend, no doubt.

After the ninja fight, two demons emerge. One is dressed in white, presumably to represent good, and the other is dressed in black. The demon in black wears a target on his back, seems far too happy for an evil spirit, and appears to be enjoying standing around on his high stilts, smiling at everyone.

Suddenly, the attention shifts to a group of clowns standing on a balcony above a pachinko parlour. They start shouting in Japanese using megaphones. After exchanges are made between the clowns and demons that I can’t quite comprehend, people in the audience begin to laugh, a lot. An elderly woman on a bicycle with an impossible number of shopping bags sighs as she tries to weave through the crowds. I might just add, this whole festival is taking place on a busy shopping street and is perhaps causing a little too much chaos for some of the locals who just want to get to where they need to be.

After the shouting, all hell breaks loose. Paper bags are dropped from the sky by clowns in their thousands. Children and adults alike scramble to collect them from the floor. I raise my arm and catch one in mid-air. Everyone is rushing around, trying to salvage one of the decorated paper pouches. People are crashing into each other, forgetting about the safety of others. Regardless of the carnage, it’s actually a lot of fun.

The pouch I caught predictably contains roasted beans. After a while, everyone goes silent before a chant occurs. Following the chant, people start pouring beans into their hands and throwing them as hard as they can at the demon. His smile is quickly wiped from his face by roasted beans.

As I run out of beans, a little girl walks over to me and smiles. She takes my hand and pours beans into my palm. “Quickly! Throw!” she says before giggling off and returning to her parents. Eventually, everyone runs out of ammunition, and the event draws to a close. As people start to leave, the floor becomes a hunting ground for hungry pigeons. A man with a megaphone starts shouting at the birds, and they eventually fly away. The last thing that happens is all of the performers, clowns, demons, and mimes begin to clean the streets.

Something about seeing a mime hard at work sweeping the streets fills me with a sense of disappointment. It kind of spoils the character and takes away from the magic. I offer to help sweep using one of the many brushes, but I am shooed away, just like the pigeons.

I still have some of the afternoon to kill, so I head over to Senso-ji. It is the weekend, and there is usually something taking place around the temple. Sure enough, I find a street market, the usual man with his performing monkey doing some tricks, and strangely, for the first time ever, the temples and shrines in the complex are each holding some sort of service. I head into the main hall of Senso-ji Temple, and although it is very difficult to get close enough, I manage to sneak a quick photograph before being told once again to move on.

With nothing much else to do, and Asakusa now mostly quiet, I head home to eat some demon-killing beans.