Weekend Origami--Setsubun Ogre!

dried soybean snacks for eating and throwing--I *love* this packaging:-))

 February third is the wonderful and wacky Bean-Throwing Festival in Japan, "Setsubun" in Japanese. "Seasonal division" literally, it was traditionally part of the spring festival and is associated with the Lunar New Year.  If you think of it that way-- a festival where you throw beans at ogres (those ogres, you know, they *hate* beans) to drive evil spirits out of the home and bring happiness and good luck in for the New Year-- it seems a vaguely sensible thing to do.  I'll explain more about that tomorrow.

For today, I thought you might like to try making an origami Oni (ogre).  There are Red Ogres (Aka Oni) and Blue Ogres (Ao Oni), like this:

Aka Oni, Ao Oni

This year's Oni Pan--the boys got Ao Oni, and Cici got Aka Oni.  Fun little cream-filled Oni buns, but different than last year's buns.





Oni origami is fairly simple--maybe not quite 3-year-old simple, but probably 6-year-old simple, and definitely elementary school simple (my daughter had no problem following along making these).

In fact, my daughter made the red oni bottom left, "Fuku" (Happiness) in the middle, and the blue oni bottom right.  Koshi made the tiny red one, and it's his hands folding the Aka Oni in the video below.



For the eyes and fangs, I drew with a thick black marker on a piece of white paper and then cut them out and Cici glued them on.  Or, just draw the whole face on with black marker--suit yourself:-))

Dekita, ka na?  Did you do it?  Gambare, ne!
Mata asobou, ne!