The Sublime Art of the Holiday Mochi Party

It's been a few weeks, and I have a lot to catch up on.  It's a bit daunting, but I'll try and get it done over the next couple days.  This post will be about something that happened on the Sunday after Christmas.

Through a friend who's been here for 5 years, I got invited to a mochi-making party at an apartment shared by several Kanazawa artists.  Many Japanese people have never made mochi, as it's a bit of a throwback cultural thing.  You can buy it and eat it everywhere, but a mochi-making party is sort of like making taffy in someone's backyard.

I got to try my hand at the hammer, which everyone thought was pretty hilarious.

Mochi is essentially rice and water.  The rice is made and steamed over a wood stove, then placed in a round wood block with a depression, then hammered over and over until it becomes sticky paste.  The next step is to roll it in flour and pull it into small balls.  There are many ways to serve mochi; for example, we had it with crunchy red beans rolled inside, with a kind of applesauce made using grated daikon (big radish-like vegetable), and topped with sweet soy powder.

 

 

 There was also a grill for some yakitori barbeque to pass the time between mochi rounds.  Well, that and the sake.

 

 The daikon applesauce.  This was my least favorite, and fairly bitter, but I did my best to swallow with a smile.

 

 Making the red bean mochi.  Favorite.

The whole party was very family oriented, and pretty wonderful.  I certainly had difficulty communicating with some people, but I've found that artists tend to have a higher-than-average English level.  I hope I'll have other opportunities to hang out with the same group of people.