The Sticky

Another fine fall day this past Saturday, perfect for BBQing with friends and learning an old Japanese custom: 餅つき　or Mochi Making. Mochi, if you recall from a previous post, is a Japanese rice cake made from glutinous rice. I believe I originally described the texture of mochi as "playdoh-like".

Kanai sensei, a super friendly Japanese teacher, whose English is excellent, invited some JET friends, his neighbors and myself over to his lovely country home for the day. Upon arrival, we were put to work immediately, taking turns mashing and pounding the rice with a big wooden hammer. I expected it to be a long, tedious process, but in fact we were done in less than 30 minutes.

The tools:


The power:



The product:After finishing, we gorged ourselves on the fruits of our labor, combining the mochi with all sort of goodies like natto (fermented soy beans), anko (red bean paste), kurogoma (black sesame paste), and Japanese pickles.



Mochi is quite sticky and a bit hard to eat. It is tempting to stick the whole cake in your mouth at once rather than take bites, but this is unadviseable. More than a few people die every year from choking on mochi. It is so sticky, it is said, that even the Heimlich maneuver is not effective at removing mochi stuck in the throat. A vacuum is recommended.

After the mochi, Kanai-sensei plopped down two enormous slabs of salmon on an outdoor grill, then covered them with cabbage, bean sprouts, and miso. More gorging.

Then the wives cooked the rest of the mochi on the grill, known as "yakimochi". However, "yakimochi" is also the word for jealousy. You can imagine the "wives cooking up jealousy" jokes that followed...

Another highlight of the day was Masaki-san, the genki neighbor, whose English was not so good, but was a barrel of laughs. Inexplicably, he is a big fan of American football and hates Japanese beer. He ONLY drinks Budweiser. This baffles me. Perhaps its because its made from rice.