New Years is a very important time for the Japanese and they have a tonne of different traditions for the period. One of the more fun of these is making Mochi, a sticky rice cake, by pounding cooked glutinous rice with a big-ass mallet until it’s smooth and very, very sticky. This year Maki invited me to spend the day with her family making Mochi and generally hanging out. It was a lot of fun, her kids are unbelievably cute and her whole family were amazingly warm and welcoming.

One of the highlights of the day was when a courier arrived about noon with an enormous box of live seafood. Apparently they have some relatives down in Kyushu who felt bad about missing out on the celebrations, so they decided to send a bunch of stuff up. In the box were a stack of shellfish and a bag of still squirming sea-cucumbers. The shellfish went straight on the barbie and of course it was only fair that they made me eat the first one. I skillfully delayed the event by struggling to get the bloody thing out of its shell with a fork. By the time it popped out with a deliciously unappealing slurping sound, several others had already partaken. The taste was pretty good, not unlike a very pungent mussel, although the back half was horribly bitter. I managed to eat two before I kindly declined offers for any more.

In total, they made 10 batches of Mochi of various kinds. Some was eaten on the spot, but the majority was to take home and eat over the New Years Period. Pointless trivia: Apparently the best way to save someone choking on a lump of mochi is to shove a vacuum cleaner down their throat and suck the offending lump out. I’m certainly glad I didn’t choke.

Posted in Japan on Friday December 31, 2004.

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