Making Mochi

Yesterday was a parent sit in at B's Japanese class. The class was about making Mochi.

I had been confused because every time anyone described it, they made an arm motion with both arms that looked like someone pounding a spike into a railroad track. It was quite fun to discover that this is because you actually do pound mochi dough.

First a machine similar to a rice maker overcooks the rice until it is a gooey dough. Then the children used a tool that was a cylinder of wood with a handle to pound the dough. Each child got to pound a couple of times. The parents got a turn too, and they called in the bigger kids from one of the older classes. Between pounds, a parent used their hand to fold the dough.

Then the children rolled the mochi in little balls over a flour covered surface. The little balls were flattened and a filling placed on top (B liked strawberry best) and the dough was pulled over that. It was fun. A couple of parents made other mochi dishes at the same time.

Then, we ate!

We also played a guessing game and a badminton-type game.


This evening, B tried to ask in Japanese to have two friends come over. He used issho ni! He incorrectly used haite but I can see why. (Haite and kite are the verbs that he knows for wearing clothes, and kite also means come). And he sort of threw all of the words out there in a semblance of an order but that's fine, it will come in time.