Last Sunday, my boss invited me to his house to help make mochi for New Year's! I'd never done it before or been to Ichihara, the city next to Chiba where he lives, so it was a good chance to discover some new things.
I met up with my boss at the station, and before going to his house we took a little detour to Umizuri Kouen, a fishing place in Ichihara. I've said it before, but somehow I always forget that 1) Japan is an island and 2) Chiba City is right by the ocean, even though I live and work really close to Chiba Port - it just doesn't feel that near - so it was nice to see the ocean! It was pretty cloudy that day, but apparently when it's clear you can see Tokyo, Chiba City, and Mt. Fuji from there. Inside the facility there was also a cute little mini museum/play area with some history of the area and a giant whale, as well as a little aquarium (with only one kind of fish, haha). We went on the pier where there were a few people fishing, too.
And then we went to his house to make mochi! Traditionally mochi was made by pounding (instead of a man in the moon, in Japan they say there are rabbits making mochi), but nowadays there are handy dandy machines, so all you do is put in the mochi rice (which is different from normal rice - we ate a little bit of it with soy sauce and it was much stickier, though still delicious) and let it do its work, which is much easier. I don't think I really thought about the fact that mochi is made from rice before, so it was pretty cool to see it go from rice to a big sticky mass!
Since the machine actually made the mochi, what I was actually helping to do was to shape the mochi into blocks, so that they could cut them later to eat during New Year's (I think). After my boss's wife skillfully grabbed the mochi out of the machine (which was constantly rotating), she split it into pieces and we flattened it out into rectangles. It was pretty hot but we covered our hands in some sort of starch, so it wasn't too bad. In the end we also formed them into little round cakes, which I guess is a little easier to store. I enjoyed shaping the mochi, since I'd never done it before, though they kept telling me it was hard to believe it was my first time (though they were probably just saying that to be nice, haha).
After that we had some of the mochi for lunch! Up until now I've only had mochi (a kind of sticky rice cake) in desserts, like mochi ice cream or mochi with red bean paste, so I didn't realize that actually mochi itself isn't sweet at all, but I guess that's what makes it so versatile: for lunch we had it with kinako (a kind of sweet powder), red bean paste, and grated daikon with soy sauce! I even had it the next day (because they were kind enough to give me some to take home) in pizza form - easy to make with a microwave, pizza sauce, and cheese, and super tasty!
Anyway, I'm really glad to have had the chance to help them make mochi, since that's definitely not an experience I would get on my own, and I enjoyed it a lot! :)
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