Omochi Tsuki

Shortly before the new year rolls around, a traditional activity in Japan is omochi tsuki, or making mochi, Japanese rice balls. Mochi are round, and the dough is sticky and gooey, so one must take small bites and chew carefully, lest the mochi lodge itself into your throat, creating a choking hazard! Mochi are delicious, and eating mochi is a traditional way to celebrate the new year.

To make mochi, one must buy rice that is used especially for mochi and then boil the rice. After the rice is boiled, it is poured into a hollowed out, large wooden container that may in fact be a tree stump. Then, you take a large mallet that looks like a wooden hammer. First, you use the hammer to mash the rice until the grains have lost their shape and stick together. Then, you use the mallet as a hammer and pound the rice to turn it into one soft, huge mass of rice. But you have to be careful to not pound the rice too much, or else the rice will become too soft, and the mochi will fall apart when you place them into soup broth. After being pounded out, the huge mass of rice dough is removed from the wooden container and placed on a table covered in flour. The flour prevents the dough from sticking to people's hands. Small sections are torn from the rice dough and manipulated with the hands to form small balls. The balls are set on the table, which slightly flattens the bottom of the rice ball, and the mochi is ready to eat.

I went to my friend Yuya's house for this event, and we all ate the mochi by putting it in a fish broth with vegetables. We also inserted sweet red bean paste into some of the mochi for dessert.