A Note About Mochi

Mochi, if you recall from a previous missive, is a sweet, sticky, rice cake with a play-doh like texture (strangely delicious!). Miyagi is famous, at least nationally, for zunda-mochi, which is mochi covered in a green soy-bean paste/sauce (even more strangely delicious). On Friday, at dinner at a Japanese friend's house, I had natto-mochi, which is the stickiest thing on earth. Natto, is fermented soy beans (though different than the soy beans used to make zunda). I cant describe the taste, but the texture is like eating beans smothered in Elmer's glue. I am rather indifferent to it (not nearly as terrible as it sounds, yet its not delicous either), but I eat it merely for the praise it brings me. Japanese automatically think better of you if you can eat natto. Japanese often eat natto with rice for breakfast, sometimes mixed with karashi/Japanese mustard.

So, here we have a sweetish play-doh like subtance covered with beans covered with Elmers glue, and I ate it willingly. And I would eat it again. Inexplicable.