Mochi, Mochi, Mochi, I made you out of rice...

I've recently discovered a new form of therapy designed to relieve stress and keep you in shape all at the same time. It runs along the same lines as punching bags and stress balls: Make mochi.

One of my JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) from one school invited me to make mochi with her and her family (Including her twin brother, who happens to be a JTE at my other school) last Saturday.

For those of you not familiar with what mochi is: It's a rice cake made from really sticky rice. You pound it into a paste, as indicated here, then break it into smaller pieces and mold it. You can get it anytime, but it's usually a New Year's food. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mochi

You cook rice in a thicker-and-stickier-than-usual manner to get the right consistency, then you toss it all into an usu (type of big mortar) and mash it all together with kine (pestle - think high school science, but about 20x as big. And with handles. Once it's sufficiently mashed, that's when the therapy/fitness aspect kicks in. You have two people working on it: one to bash and the other to fix. The one bashing uses the kine in overhand strikes to beat the rice into paste; the one fixing keeps their hand wet with water and smacks the rice. This is done both to keep the rice from drying out, and also to indicate where to hit next. When the basher is breaking through all the way to the bottom, the fixer has to grab and end and fold it over to ensure that there's always a thick layer of rice to pound. Crazy thing is that this is done in between the strikes, so the fixer has about a half second in which to either smack the rice or grab and end and fold it over. Rhythm is key because it is very easy for the basher to bash fixer's hand, which no one wants to see happen.

Once the rice is no longer rice and instead becomes sort of a white, homogeneous paste, it is placed on a wooden board with flour and separated into smaller pieces. These are then worked out by hand into disc-shaped portions that are left to cool. Once that's done, eat! It's a traditional New Year's food here
(Mid-sentence aside: New Year's here is where it's at. Christmas isn't really celebrated other than to give gifts, that being because more than 90% of the country is Shinto/Buddhist. But! New Year's is the spiritual time to let go of the current year and hope for good luck in the coming year. Very family-intensive. I make it that Japan's New Year is analogous to the West's Christmas in terms of family-time and sentimental meaning.)
and so it's often bought or given out as gifts. It's also used in the home as offerings at shrines, and and charms meant to bring good fortune.

That all being said, it's quite relaxing to picture someone's face in the rice while you're beating it to high heaven. Not only does it turn it into paste faster, but it feels oh so good. I think that gyms should start stocking striking apparatuses - they work wonders for both the body and mind.

One bale of rice is more than enough to tire one out. So you can imagine my resignation when I learned that we were making six. Our rapid swings and devastating blows expended on the first bale soon gave way to haphazard hacks and snail-paced rhythms towards the end, and the time that we needed for break in between increased arithmetically.

After many a tired and grueling hour later, we all enjoyed lunch together, at which it seemed that my glass of beer could never be filled fast enough after the smallest sip. My JTE and his infant daughter had the right idea with a nap, and it goes without saying that as soon as I got home, I followed suit.

I'll be spending the next 11 months, 30 days training for next year's mochi-making day. I'll need every day, believe you me.