makin' mochi

apparently it's somewhat of a lost tradition in japan. one hundred years ago it was "the thing to do" for new years, but now most families choose to forgo the mess of making mochi and instead buy it from their local mochi-dealers. this year, however, i had the pleasure of experiencing the age-old tradition with my friend tsugiko's family. the event starts early in the morning (8am for me and justin because we are lazy americans) around 6am. it takes awhile for the rice steamers to heat up, but once they did we were in business. i will take you through step by step...

1) rice is separated into "bunches" to be steamed

2) rice is steamed over a blazing fire in a traditional iron pot(i don't remember the name, but it has one and it is special)

3) you place (or flop rather) the steamed rice into a very old, heavy stone bowl

4) you grind the rice into the stone using circular motions and a big, heavy wooden hammer-like apparatus (justin did an excellent job at this as pictured below)

5) next starts the pounding. this work invloves two persons, one who pounds(which is actaully swinging the large hammer-thing down and wacking the rice into mush (or mochi) and one who moves the rice for the pounder. justin and i did one round each (being both the pounder and assistant)...apparently it was strange for a woman to be a pounder so the family thought i was really something...that or strange. i hope to get some video on this later.


6) after the rice has been prefectly pounded into mochi, it's brought over to the women (and/or children/foreigners who wish to help out) where it is rolled into large slabs for cutting

7) and lastly you make mochi balls for the new years and keep it in your house for your ancestral shrine...and then after a week you eat it.


after all the mochi was made, we celebrated by eating some of the best soba and udon (it was homemade) i have ever eaten. tsugiko and sachiko told us later that they(the family) call the lady who made it 'sobamazing' because she is so good at making soba. see, japanese people do have good humor.

here's the whole mochi-makin' crew including granny who changed her outfit four different times so we had to take more photos for each different outfit. fabulous.