Pounding the mochi

Mochi is a Japanese rice cake made of glutinous rice pounded into paste and molded into shapes - usually a sphere or a cube. A popular food all year round, mochi is a traditional food for the Japanese New Year. Once made the mochi is served with a variety of Japanese sauces, adding ice cream as a filling is also popular!

Polished glutinous rice is soaked overnight and cooked. The cooked rice is pounded with wooden mallets called kine in a traditional mortar known as an usu. Two people will alternate the work, one pounding and the other turning and wetting the mochi. They must keep a steady rhythm or they may accidentally injure one another with the heavy kine, which is not as easy to wield as it looked. When it was my turn, the lady who was wetting the mochi looked suitably anxious... Happily no hands or mallets were damaged in the making of this blip!

I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.
Eartha Kitt