At McDonald’s, I ask Yuka, “What will happen at the shrine? What’s the ceremony like?”

“You will see,” Yuka says, biting into her Big Mac.

“Did you celebrate this with your family when you were growing up?”

“We threw fuku-mame at my father. That’s tradition. The shrine is same but different.”

“You threw soybeans at your father? Did you enjoy it?”

“Yes, very much.” She smiles.

“But what if you hit him in the eye?”

“Oh, he wore oni, devil mask. And montusuki hakama.”

“Which is?”

“Man kimono.” She sips on her coke through the straw. “Here, see.” She pulls from her shopping bag two cardboard masks, strange faces with fangs, horns, and thick eyebrows.

“Are we supposed to wear those?”

She smiles and put the masks back in her bag. “Do you throw thing at your father?”

“I never knew my father,” I say, struck by how irreverent it seems to throw beans at your dad. “He left my mother when I was a baby. If I could find him, I’m sure I’d enjoy throwing something at him.”

As we eat, I wonder if Yuka will go on a trip with me. A national holiday is coming in two weeks. We could take the shinkansen somewhere. I want to ride the bullet train, move fast through the countryside, get away from the noisy city that’s crowding in on me. I need some quiet. Maybe Rose is right that starting a family when the President is spawning baby nukes is insane.

Yuka and I shoulder through the devil mask-wearing crowd toward the front of shrine platform where four sumo wrestlers stand. Yuka dons her mask and hands one to me. I peer out through pinhole eyes at Yuka’s devil face.

“Try to catch for good luck,” Yuka says. I’m about to ask her what she means when the sumo wrestlers, their flesh bulging over their loincloths, begin to yell:

“Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi! Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!“

Yuka leans over: “Mean, ‘Out with demon! In with good luck!’” she shouts. “Now good luck, catch!”

And the wrestlers throw dried soybeans and rice cakes into the crowd. People jump to catch.

Yuka catches a rice cake then throws off her mask, beaming. I keep jumping to try to catch some luck of my own. I don’t.

On the train, Yuka says that the Setsubun probably wasn’t even accurate since it’s unlikely that the sumo wrestlers threw in the lucky direction. The lucky direction is toward the god of the year. This year is the year of the serpent, so the beans technically should have been thrown in a south-easterly direction.