Traditional
making of rice-cakes 餅づき
One of traditional events in Taiyo no Ie is making of rice cakes in traditional way. How do we do it?
How
to make rice-cakes (mochi)
First
of all, you cannot use just any kind of rice for mochi. It is round
shaped rice called mochi rice. It has to be steamed; you put it in logs
shaped for mochi tsuki (rice beating). Then you have to mash it,
since if it would be beaten soon, it would go out of the log! Then the mochi
tsuki starts!!! Beat, beat, and beat! After rice is formed into a kind of
dough you can make mochi out of it!!
Make
small balls of dough, and roll it in mix of sesame seed powder, sugar and salt,
or kinako (Roasted and grained daizu beans), sugar and salt.
There is also a sort of mochi when you mix rice dough with Japanese
radish or azuki beans (red, sweet beans). All of these are various kinds
of mochi!!! Of course, you can always buy mochi in a store, but
they are much tastier when you make it in traditional way, and there very few
places in Japan where it is still made the way we do it!
There
were about 50 volunteers that helped us out with this event!!! Since hammers
are very heavy, people were taking turns in beating rice. Users were cheering
volunteers, shouting “yosh, yosh” which is usual way to cheer someone
while doing something. Later on they also tried themselves out in rice beating.
It was interesting to see that older once were much more persistent and bet
longer than youngsters.
By
noon we made enough mochi for more than 120 that were in front of
Samurai House to have lunch. We also served home made tonjiru - mixed vegetables and beef pot boiled with miso.
After
a good lunch, volunteers from Komatsu Union, Sumitomo Life Insurance, Asia
University and many individual volunteers who came to the event continued to
make mochi. We also made red and white mochi. It is called kouhaku
mochi and they are usually presented and given on the occasion of
congratulations, festivity etc. The reason we made everyone mochi-to-go
is to thank our volunteers for their kind help during the year and to ask for
the favor in the next year as well.
