(I love this ritual--I'm going to tell my kids about it)

Please do! Ovid writing just slightly over two thousand years ago thought it was archaic even then.

Re: Japan, yes! Setsubun, on February 3. You eat as many dried soybeans as your age, and then some in the family put on masks to be demons, and someone else flings beans (... the same soybeans? I'm not remembering right now. Probably?) and shouts "oni wa soto; fuku wa uchi!" (demons out, good fortune in!)

Thank you for describing that to me! Man, while being neither ghost nor demon so far as I know, I really want some beans now.