Mochi-tsuki

The Ohana Festival was held today at the Japanese Cultural Center. Of course, our piggish nature would never miss an opportunity to pig out. As expected, the line for the Okonomiyaki booth was a mile long since okonomiyaki, a Japanese style pancake/pizza, is not served in many restaurants and is supposed to taste very good. Since the line was too long, we decided to hop over to the Andagi booth. The most interesting part of the festival was the mochi pounding (mochi-tsuki) demonstration. Mochi is made first by steaming large batches of mochi-rice, which is then placed in a huge stone basin (usu) for pounding. Strong men use large wooden hammers (kine) to beat the rice-dough in a rhythmic manner. If their timing is off, someone may get hurt.
When the rice-dough is ready, it is pinched off in small balls and filled with azuki (a sweet bean paste) or other yummy sweet ingredients. This is first time we ate fresh mochi and it tastes really good!