The Art of Making and Eating Mochi (Have Your Vacuum Handy)

I hadn't meant to post again so soon, but I wanted to get this up before January was over since it has relevance to the New Year. We had the opportunity to participate in some traditional mochi making (mochitsuki) a few weeks ago. Now what, you ask, is mochi? I've heard it defined as a "glutinous rice cake" but that doesn't mean much to me (half of the things we eat over here can be called rice cakes). I think the best way to describe it is to explain how it is made. Rice that has been soaking for a long time (often over night) is cooked, usually over a real fire. The cooked rice is then placed in a large stone mortar (usu) and then pounded with a very large pestle (kine). One or two people will alternate pounding the rice while another person has the responsibility of turning the rice, keeping it wet with warm water, and dodging the huge hammer.



The sticky mass that results from this process can then be formed into shapes (usually spheres) and added to many traditional New Years dishes such as 0-zoni or my personal favorite, oshiruko. I'm also quite fond of kinako mochi which is prepared by roasting the mochi over a fire, dipping it into a sauce made of water, sugar and soy sauce and then coating it in kinako (soy flour). To those of you who are now drooling on your keyboards and are on your way out the door to buy some mochi (yes, it can be purchased) I offer the following suggestion: CHEW! And then swallow. This way you may avoid becoming yet another New Years mochi casualty. Because it is so sticky, mochi will easily lodge in your throat where even the Heimlich can't get to it. But wait! Don't Panic! A leading Japanese online medical reference recommends using your vacuum cleaner to suck it out! Although this method doesn't seem to be universally approved of, it has saved at least one life.

Japanese Emoticons

Recently it has been too cold to crawl out from under our kotatsu, meaning we haven't been doing much traveling outside the city. As I've sat huddled under blankets in front of our space heater I've had some time to keep in touch with a few of my Japanese friends through texts. It has been a very disturbing experience as I realized that even with my decent conversational Japanese skills I couldn't understand the texts at all. 顔文字, kaomoji, or Japanese emoticons, seem to be at the root of the problem.

Research has shown that culture is a huge factor in determining where you look when interpreting facial expressions. The Japanese are more prone to look at the eyes, whereas Americans look to the mouth to know whether someone is happy or sad, etc. This cultural phenomenon is perhaps most evident in emoticons. A typical American smiley face : ) and sad face : ( look thus. While the Japanese happy face (^_^) and sad face (;_;) look thus. In the American emoticons, the mouth changes to signal the mood, whereas in the Japanese kaomoji, the eyes change and the mouth remains the same. Here are some of the Japanese emoticons that stumped me when I first saw them:

1. (ToT)

2. m (_ _) m

3. (#^.^#)

4. ＿|￣|○

5. ヽ（´ー｀）┌

Can you match up the emotion with the emoticon?

A. depressed
B. mellow
C. crying
D. apologetic
E. shy

Go here for more fun with emoticons from the West and East alike.