For those who don't know, mochi is a delicious pounded Japanese rice treat. You can find it year round, and I have fallen in love with yukimi daifuku, which is a small ball of ice cream wrapped inside a cozy mochi covering. It is especially popular and traditional for New Year's. We can now find it everywhere, including our neighborhood Circle K.
Friday at Kasugaoka was Mochi Tsuki, the traditional mochi pounding ceremony. Nowadays there are machines that automatically make your mochi for you, but, the traditional; and much more entertaining method is far more labor intensive. The rice is soaked overnight and cooked in what looks like your basic wood burning stove. The rice is then pounded to oblivion in giant mortars with wooden mallets by a team of two adults. One whacks and the other turns and wets the rice to keep it from sticking to the mallets. After this process the glob of rice is formed in to little balls or squares to be enjoyed. It is common to cover it in some kind of powdered sugar, sprinkles, or my psersonal favorite, kinako; 'yellow powder' made from crushed soybeans. These tasty morsels are often filled with something sweet like ice cream or sweet red bean paste (annko) and then called daifuku. At school I was taught its common to have mochi with a soy sauce and sugar, or soy sauce and radish combination.
So, at my school on this very special day all the teachers and mom volunteers are out on the playground preparing for the event. A few classes come out at a time and each stands in a circle around a mortar while the cooked rice is transferred from the stove by a team of two. To begin, a pair of teachers start beating and rotating the rice until it is completely mashed. Afterwards, the kids take turns hitting the rice glob. All while bystanders are chanting 'YO-I-SHO' which doesn't have a direct translation, but I was told means 'Fight!' or 'one, two, one, two'.
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| Yoisho. Yoisho. |
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| Some of them could barely pick the mallet back up. |
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| My turn! |
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| The transfer of the rice into the mortar. |
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| Every time there is a school event there is a team of professional photographers running around , so the kids are always posing. |
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| Ballin' it up. |
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| My pink school, Kasugaoka. |
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| Rice cookin' crew. |
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| Traditional rice cooker. |
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| She's one of the gym teachers and is always practicing her English with me. |
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| A typical school lunch. I don't normally get miso, mochi and an orange, though. That was special for Mochi Tsuki. |
