Warabi Mochi

Warabi Mochi
Tokara, $4

Mochi is one of Japan's staple foods, a rice-based dough that can be eaten sweet or savory.  While most mochi is made from mochigome, a short-grained glutinous rice, other foods that share mochi's characteristic chewiness are sometimes also known as "mochi".  Warabi mochi gets its springy texture not from rice, but from the starch of bracken ferns.  Translucent and slightly slippery, warabi mochi is a classic Japanese summer sweet, the mere sight of which gives some relief from heat and humidity.  Tokara's version is served with molasses syrup and a dusting of kinako, a powder made from toasted soybeans. 

Sakuramochi

Sakuramochi
Tokara (above)
Umai-do (below)

Sakuramochi is named for the pale pink blossoms of the cherry tree, and like those blossoms is only around for a short time each spring.

In Japan, there are two regional variations on sakuramochi. Both types have a core of smooth koshian red bean paste and are wrapped in a brined cherry leaf, but the middle layer differs. In the Kanto region around Tokyo, the bean paste is rolled in a tiny pancake made from pink-tinted rice flour. In the Kansai region (which includes Kyoto), the bean paste is enveloped in a ball of mochi rice dough, often made from dōmyōji-ko a "chunky" glutinous rice flour that originated at Osaka's Dōmyōji Temple; the dōmyōji-ko gives the mochi the ruffled appearance of a cluster of breeze-tossed petals.

Our Seattle wagashi makers are hewing more closely to the Kansai style. Tokara (above) makes a classic sakuramochi, with meltingly smooth koshian encased in a chewy dōmyōji pillow and jacketed in a zingy, tender leaf. At Umai-do (below), there's a homier version, with the shop's own flavorful bean paste and smooth, elastic mochi made from more widely available mochiko glutinous rice flour rather than dōmyōji-ko: a new "Seattle" style?

Coffee Daifuku

Coffee Daifuku

Two days ago my beloved family dog died; today I made coffee daifuku. It was the most fitting tribute I could come up with. (If you want to skip the backstory and head straight to the recipe, it's at the bottom of the post.)

Tucker was a rescue who ended up at the Nashville Humane Society after his previous "family" moved out their apartment in the middle of summer and left him locked up inside with no food or water. When the landlord found him three days later he was in pretty bad shape, and when my mom and I spotted him at the shelter he was about as energetic and engaged as a wet rag; all the other dogs jumped and wriggled and twinkled, but Tucker just laid in the corner of his cage, avoiding eye contact. The same impulse that compels Mom and me to buy stained, one-eyed stuffed animals and spindly Christmas trees led us to take the world's most depressed dog home for a trial adoption.

It was awkward from the get-go. Tucker was ferocious towards strangers, but a whiny crybaby around us, so fearful of separation he'd keen and jam his front paws under the closed bathroom door if you just wanted to pee in private. Neither extreme was attractive. Eventually we had a dog therapist come in, and she said some things that made sense. We humans changed our ways and gradually Tucker transitioned from impossible to merely difficult to, finally, an awesomely affectionate little dog with some residual quirks. He was devoted to my dad and the two of them developed a program of entertainingly elaborate rituals; here's what would happen every morning when Tucker saw Dad for the first time:



One problem that we never really sorted out: Tucker was a binge eater. Our previous family dog, Mac, was a classic Westie, with stumpy legs, a pig body, and a piggish attitude towards food; he'd eat almost anything, but given his limited vertical range, it was usually easy to keep him out of trouble. Tucker, in comparison, could practically levitate. He was roughly the same size as Mac, but leggier by inches.

The first weekend we had Tucker we briefly left him alone in the kitchen; first, he climbed onto the counter and took a polite but dismissive nibble out of every item in the fruit bowl before discovering the real prize, a boxed Derby pie (pecan with chocolate chips), bought at a church sale that morning. When I wandered into the kitchen a little later, hankering for a slice of pie, I was confused to see a brand-new empty pie pan shining in a patch of sun on the floor: no dents, no marks, not a single crumb. The solution to the mystery was around the corner; our catatonic 15-pound dog lying on his side with his emaciated legs stuck straight out and an entire Derby pie swelling his belly like a cow inside a cobra.

On the vet's advice, I took Tucker outside and proceeded to funnel hydrogen peroxide into him at 10-minute intervals until the pie reappeared. If I thought he'd looked dejected at the pound, I hadn't seen anything yet. That pie was probably the best thing that had happened to him in years, and it had gone horribly wrong. He was stoic about the treatment but the look on his face could have been used to solicit charitable donations.

That was only the first of many crises stemming from Tucker indulging in too much of a bad thing. I know this makes me and my parents sound horribly irresponsible, but Tucker was devilishly quick, silent, and so dexterous you'd swear he had thumbs.

Once when he was accompanying my dad on a car trip, they made a few stops on the way out of town: first at Starbucks, where Dad bought an enormous latte for the drive, and then to drop something in the mail slot outside the post office. In the seconds it took for my dad to walk from the car to the building and turn around, Tucker had lifted the venti cup out of the console between the seats, flipped off the lid, and commenced slurping. Dad didn't make a sound ("I knew if I startled him he'd spill the whole thing"), just walked calmly back to the car as Tucker watched him over the rim of the cup, lapping for dear life. By the time Dad reached down and took the cup from between Tucker's paws he'd drunk about half--but hadn't spilled a drop. As they drove off, Tucker curled into a little ball on the passenger-side floor and went to sleep. My dad finished the coffee.

So there's something right about the fact that I was at a chocolate and coffee tasting when Tucker had a stroke. When my parents called with the news, there was sadness but no shock. Over the last couple of years, Tucker's much-abused body had begun to shut down. When I last saw him, about a week before he died, he was totally deaf and blind, his bony little frame studded with lumps and growths, his smile gummy, his coat--to quote my dad--"moth-eaten".

And yet he was still so cute people in cars would slow down and grin out their windows as we jaunted around the block, me as "seeing eye person" trying to keep him from running into trees or spilling off curbs as he clipped along. Even more impressive, he was seemed happier than he had been in his anxiety-riddled prime; sure, he slept 23 hours a day, but every single time you roused him he'd deliver an abbreviated version of the joyful dance in the above video.

The first stage of mourning a rescue dog is raw sadness, and the second is this: "At least I gave him/her a better life than he/she would have had." But that's where my mourning process derailed. Tucker was certainly better off with us than with his first owners, and probably better off than with many other potential adoptive families. So he had a better life--but I didn't really give it to him.

About four months after I incited my family to adopt Tucker, I packed up and moved to Tokyo. As an irresponsible act it wasn't perhaps on par with leaving behind a baby or even a horse, but it wasn't particularly fair to either parents or dog. Tucker's death got me thinking about that stage in my life, about the fine line I walked between adventure and escape, about the things that helped me to adjust to my new life just as Tucker was adjusting to his.

Which is where coffee daifuku finally comes in. Daifuku are basic Japanese sweets, balls of bean paste skinned in fresh rice dough. As an illiterate vegetarian, I was initially drawn to the rack of daifuku at my neighborhood grocery store on the assumption that I could expect them not to contain meat. I visited more regularly when I realized that just around the time I got off work, the day's unsold daifuku were marked down to half-price. And then, eating my way through the rainbow of options, I got to the brown one: it was coffee and it was delicious.

After that I ate them every time I got the chance, sometimes even paying full price. My habit ran for months, until one day, the coffee daifuku were gone. The next day, none again. And the next.

Emboldened by my addiction, I cornered a clerk and in shaky Japanese asked about my treat. He said there were none, which of course I already knew.

"Tomorrow?" I pleaded.

He responded with a clear shake of the head and a well-enunciated "No" (rare in Japan). I never saw those daifuku again.

So today I was feeling sad about Tucker and thinking about Japan and the fact that I hadn't eaten coffee daifuku in almost exactly eleven years when I suddenly realized that I had all the ingredients to make them sitting in my kitchen. And whereas I would normally mull and research and make lists until the impulse passed, today, in Tucker's honor, I made them right away.

I've learned a lot of things from dogs in general and from Tucker in particular: the importance of a good stretch, the need to trust one's instincts, the nobility of expressing unrestrained affection. And whether because of their short lives or their tiny bladders, dogs are also masters of the immediate: they don't make to-do lists, and they don't let things drag on. So with that I headed into the kitchen for a date with coffee daifuku, feeling the ghostly touch of a wet black nose goading the back of my leg.

Spur-of-the-Moment Coffee Daifuku

for filling:
250g (freezer-burned) shiroan white bean paste; you could also use store-bought red bean paste
1 tsp instant coffee

for mochi:
1 1/4 c water
1/4 c sugar
pinch salt
1/2 tsp instant coffee
1 1/2 c (not-too-expired) mochiko sweet rice flour
starch for dusting (eg cornstarch or more mochiko)

Let's say you had big plans to make fancy Japanese sweets last year so you spent a couple of days making a stockpile of white bean paste and that cured you of your urge to make wagashi; unearth a package of forgotten shiroan from the freezer and defrost. Mix the instant coffee with just enough water to make a smooth paste and blend into the shiroan (photo below).

You might also have some mochiko, with which you planned to make microwave mochi, but then the microwave died and you were intimidated by the idea of making stovetop mochi so you pushed the box of mochiko into a dark corner of the cupboard; dig it out and dust it off.

Combine the water, sugar, salt, and coffee over medium heat, stirring until everything has dissolved. Use a dampened wooden spoon to stir in the mochi about 1/3c at a time. Once it's all in, continue to stir the gluey mass vigorously for 2-3 more minutes.

Dump the mochi out onto a surface heavily dusted with cornstarch or more mochiko. Allow to cool for a couple of minutes, until you can handle it without wincing. Roll into a fat snake and divide into 10 pieces. Dust your hands well, then roll each piece into a ball and flatten into a small patty. Top that with about 1 Tbs of the bean paste, and stretch the edges of the mochi up until they meet and pinch them together to seal the shiroan inside. Set the daifuku seam-side down on the starched surface to cool.

You can tweak the daifuku to make them as round as possible but don't expect them to look like something a machine plopped onto a conveyor belt; you are not a machine. They will be lopsided and lumpy but you will enjoy the hell out of them anyway, as will the friends you share them with.

Dairy Free Mochi

Dairy Free Mochi
Trader Joe's, $3.49/6

It wasn't so long ago that mochi was unknown in most of the US. I was introduced to the pounded rice confection by an Asian friend in college and went to on eat my body weight in the stuff on trips to Japan. I was always surprised that Americans hadn't fallen hard for a treat that's delicious, relatively healthy, and not so far removed from rice cakes. Even as sushi mania swept the country and raw fish and seaweed became every 5-year-old's favorite food, mochi continued to lurk in the shadows. Some people have told me that it wasn't so much the mochi they couldn't stomach, but the sweetened bean paste that's a standard filling.

Then came ice cream mochi, nuggets of ice cream inside a puffy mochi jacket: red bean flavor for the traditionalist, a dozen choices for everyone else. Suddenly mochi was on everyone's lips--and mochi starch on everyone's faces.

The real irony of ice cream mochi hadn't occured to me until I saw the "Dairy Free Mochi" in the freezer at Trader Joe's: the vast majority of Asians are lactose intolerant. The TJ's treats are filled with a coconut-based ice cream and come in three flavors: coconut, mango, and chocolate. They're rich and creamy and more than tasty enough to induce the lactose-intolerant to join the eat-a-box-of-ice-cream-mochi-in-a-single-sitting club.

The faux ice cream was fine but what really struck me was the mochi: slippery and dense, it was unlike any mochi I'd ever eaten. A look at the ingredients revealed that what they're calling "mochi" isn't mochi at all: "mochi starch" is composed of tapioca starch, water, coconut milk, sugar, and flavoring. A little misleading, sure, but by genercizing the concept of "mochi" Trader Joe's is actually jumping on a very Japanese bandwagon.

Mochi, the doughy confection, takes its name from mochigome, the glutinous "sweet" rice that is traditionally steamed and pounded to produce it. Other starches have since been used to produce non-rice variations on mochi, such as fern-based warabi mochi and kudzu-based kuzu mochi. One thing that these and many other foods have in common is a particular and pleasing type of chewiness--a quality known in Japanese as "mochimochi".

Trader Joe's Dairy Free, Mochigome Free Mochimochi Mochi: yum.

Mochi Ice Cream

Mochi Ice Cream

Mikawaya, $4.50/6

When I tell people about my interest in Japanese sweets, I usually get one of two responses: either polite silence, or "Have you tried those mochi ice cream balls?"

If I had a dollar for every time I've rolled my eyes at that question, I'd be able to hire my own personal mochi maker. Yes, I've tried mochi ice cream. Is it delicious? Sure. Is it interesting? Until recently, I didn't think so.

If this criticism seems absurd, let me explain that I normally find mochi as fascinating as it is delicious. Essentially an amorphous mass of so-called "sweet" glutinous rice beaten into a paste, mochi is a bland and blank thing of almost unlimited potential. Mochi can be: dried, steamed, roasted or fried; made sweet or savory; filled, coated, or dipped; formed into a hundred different shapes; eaten as a snack or offered on an altar.

Mochi is a major feature of Japanese New Year's celebrations and many families or communities gather annually for mochi making parties. Last year I attended two such mochitsuki. At Seattle's Nichirenshu, the congregation has been making mochi as a fundraiser for decades; using noisy electric grinders to transform the steamed rice helps them to keep up with orders. On Bainbridge Island, the community mochitsuki is a younger tradition with a more old-fashioned approach; volunteers take turns beating the rice with a heavy wooden mallet while onlookers enjoy the "fruits" of their labor, filled with red bean paste or dipped in sweetened soy sauce.

This year I was unable to make it to any of Seattle's mochitsuki, but I was in the mood for some mochi with which to ring in the New Year. And there they were, in the freezer at Trader Joe's: Mikawaya mochi ice cream balls. They turned out to be better than I remembered and more interesting that I expected.

Los Angeles-based Mikawaya was established in 1908 and named after Mikawa, a town in the Japanese prefecture of Aichi that was home to one of the founders. Ryuzaburo Hashimoto bought the company two years later, and his descendants have been in charge ever since. The company face a major challenge in 1942, with the signing of Executive Order 9066. Along with thousands of West Coast Japanese-Americans, the Hashimotos were "relocated" to a rural internment camp and their business was shuttered. Although Mikawaya remained closed throughout the war, the Hashimotos were able to reopen by Christmas, 1945, one door down from their previous location.

Compared with many Japanese-owned businesses, Miyakawa was relatively undented by the wartime hiatus. The Hashimoto family, however, had one unforgettable reminder of their expereince: daughter Frances, born at the internment camp in Poston, Arizona.

Today, Frances is Mikawaya's President and CEO, as well as guardian of the secret family mochi recipe. Under her leadership, Mikawaya has developed a strikingly diverse line-up. In addition to hand-formed Japanese-style wagashi sweets that Ryuzaburo would recognize, Mikawaya produces cakes, pastries, and gelato in a modern Los Angeles factory.

Introduced in 1994, mochi ice cream is now Mikawaya's best known product. A ball of ice cream encased in soft rice dough, mochi ice cream is an elegantly simple hybrid of Japanese and Europe traditions. Seven flavors are now on the market; Mikawaya asked fans to vote via Facebook for flavor number eight and the winner was pumpkin. When the new treat appears later this year it will epitomize the melding of Japanese, European, and indigenous American tastes.

Tokaragashi V

Tokaragashi V

Since I bought Tokara's seasonal wagashi at almost the same time last year, this box gave me the pleasure of recognizing an old favorite along with the thrill of discovering two new delights.

I was too slow to check Tokara's website for the correct names and descriptions, so apologies for being a bit vague. The modernist flower (above) was soft, translucent mochi, decorated with petal marks seared in by a branding iron and tiny cubes of kanten jelly for abstract drops of morning dew. Inside, a black sesame paste--pungent, dry, and velvety as halva.


















A bundled-up bamboo leaf unfurled to reveal a fu manju (above), a dumpling of steamed wheat gluten, flavored with grassy yomogi and tucked around a core of sweet, chunky red beans.

Last but not least, the "old friend", Gourd (below): matcha-flavored white bean paste inside a molded kanten jelly textured with crushed, cooked rice.

To see more of Tokara's beautiful creations:
Tokaragashi I
Tokaragashi II
Tokaragashi III
Tokaragashi IV

Mochitsuki II: Bainbridge Island

Mochitsuki 2010
Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community and Islandwood School

Having never previously participated in making mochi, one of my favorite foods, I've recently had a run of good luck: two mochi-making events (mochitsuki) in two weeks! In my previous post on the annual mochitsuki at Seattle's Nichiren Buddhist Church I talked a little about mochi's religious significance and the reasons that mochitsuki so often take place just before the New Year holidays.

The annual mochitsuki hosted by the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community (BIJAC) generally takes place after New Year's and is resolutely secular--but that's not to say it's without larger significance.

When Japanese Americans living on the West Coast were officially "relocated" in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, Bainbridge Island was where the process began. On March 30, 1942, 227 island residents of Japanese descent were rounded up and packed onto a ferry, bound for an isolated detention camp in Idaho. As the first to be taken from their homes, the Bainbridge Island detainees were among the last to return, but during their long absence they were not forgotten. The editor of the local paper publicy decried the Exclusion Act, and other islanders resisted it in quieter ways. After the war, Bainbridge Island welcomed its detainees back to homes, farms, and business that had been maintained for them.

With its free public mochitsuki, the BIJAC's commemorates the detainees (at least one of whom, a spry 99-year-old, was present for the event) and thanks the larger Bainbridge Island community for its support. With free mochi and performances by Seattle Kokon Taiko, the event is so popular that for the last 3 or 4 years it has taken place at Islandwood School, the island's largest venue (and even so, the parking lot filled in the first hour and cars lined the approach road for blocks).














These days most non-commercial mochi is made by steaming pulverized glutinous rice (mochiko), often in the microwave, or by using a home "mochi maker"--an electric countertop rice cooker that steams the rice, then processes it into a fluffy paste. It's a rare treat to see mochi made the "old-fashioned" way with usu (above left) and kine (above right), a stone bowl and wooden mallet. A stump placed under the usu raises it to a comfortable height and absorbs some of the reverberations. The kine are soaked in water to keep them from getting mired in the sticky mass of rice.

At the BIJAC event pre-soaked rice was cooked in stacked wooden steamer boxes over gas cookers placed at the edge of the lawn. Then, batch by batch, the freshly-steamed rice was dumped out of the steamer box and into the usu (below left). Before vigorous pounding could start, the rice had to be pre-mushed (below right); otherwise everyone within a 10-foot radius would be showered with flying grains.














Then came the main act. The area where the pounding took place had a kind of carnival air, as a crowd gathered to cheer, applaud, and pitch in. The pounding was emceed by a middle-aged guy had a great sense of humor, crack timing, nerves of steel, and hands of asbestos, Shoichi Sugiyami.

After selecting voluteers from the audience, Sugiyama armed them with kine and arranged them around the usu. Becuase keeping a rythym is essential for avoiding kine clashes, he also gave each pounder a number and counted them out as they went, intervening when things got too synchopated.



With the batch well on its way, Sugiyama would rotate in kids from the crowd, some barely taller than the kine:



















Finally, one strapping volunteer would be called upon to strong-arm the mochi into submission. As the lone pounder hammered away, Sugiyama screamed instructions while darting in between blows to turn or wet the mochi or pick out stray splinters (like I said: steel and asbestos).

Every time Sugiyama judged a batch to be ready, the crowd errupted in cheers. Then, like a dad tossing a toddler into the air, he would flip the lump of mochi out of the usu and drop into onto a tray (below left).

Inside the Islandwood dining hall, the fresh mochi was deposited on a large work table, where a volunteer divided it among a crowd of waiting children (and a few adults) before showing them how wrap the mochi around small balls of red bean paste (anko). Meanwhile, in the Islandwood kitchen, more volunteers were expertly preparing and rolling more mochi, which was boxed up as two-packs (one plain mochi, one anko-filled; above right) and given away at a central table (free, but donations appreciated). The dining hall quickly filled with dozens of visitors making a picnic of succulent mochi and cups of hot tea.

Fresh mochi can be eaten right away--plain, dipped in soy sauce or kinako (toated soybean powder), or stuffed with anko. It can also be refrigerated or frozen. Hardened mochi can be re-steamed, broiled or toasted; exposed to heat it swells like a marshmallow, developing a gooey center and a crispy, bubbled exterior. The reheated mochi is often added to a savory soup called ozoni, or to a sweet red bean soup called zenzai or shiruko.

Mochitsuki I: Seattle Nichiren Buddhist Church

Mochitsuki
Seattle Nichiren Buddhist Church, December 2009

A paste made from steamed glutinous rice, mochi is one of the confectionery world's most adept shapeshifters. It can be rock-hard and angular (kirimochi) or pillow-soft and spherical (marumochi); fish-belly white or brightly colored; plain or flavored; raw or roasted; stuffed with bean jam, fruit, chocolate, or ice cream. Mochi can even mean different things in different contexts; it is equally appropriate as a offering to the gods or as an afternoon snack . In fact, it's only my own bias that causes me to claim it as a "sweet" at all--though made with so-called "sweet" rice, plain mochi has a neutral flavor that lends itself just as well to savory applications.

While mochi is popular year-round, it is perhaps most prominent during Japanese New Year celebrations. Mochi is a key component in osechi ryori, a selection of foods customarily eaten over the New Year holiday in order to ensure health and prosperity in the coming year. This mochi is usually made towards the end of December so that it will be ready for the holidays.

The Japanese expression for mochi-making, mochitsuki, is both an activity and an event. In many places, mochitsuki is a communal undertaking that kicks off the holidays, bringing families and neighbors together to share in the work of preparing for the New Year. The members of Seattle's historic Nichiren Buddhist Church have been gathering for mochitsuki for just about as long as any of them can remember. Established in 1916, the Nichiren Church moved to its current home on South Weller in the spring of 1929. For two days every December, mochitsuki takes over the church's industrial kitchen and large dining hall.

On the first day, sacks full of mochigome (sweet glutinous rice; above, left) are washed and placed in buckets to soak overnight. The next day the rice is cooked, one batch at a time, in wooden steamer boxes (above, right) until soft and translucent.

Traditionally the rice is turned out into a large stone mortar, or usu, then pounded into paste using a wooden mallet, or kine. After years of old-fashioned mochitsuki weakened the floor of the church, the Nichren congregation switched to the electric mochi makers that they use today, contraptions rather like a sausage grinder, driven by a small motor and a rubber belt.

As the machine whirs, two workers use sticks to force cooked rice into the maw of the grinder, which extrudes fresh mochi onto a tray dusted with katakuriko potato starch:

Then the still-steaming mochi is transferred into the funnel of small plastic hand-crank mill; as the mochi emerges from a nozzle on the side, the operator swings a small guillotine at regular intervals, cutting the mochi into equal pieces.

An assistant passes these pieces down the table to more volunteers, who wait at workstations consisting of a well-dusted wooden board and a small bowl of additional katakuriko (fresh mochi is incredibly sticky!).

They roll the mochi between their palms until, satisfied with the shape, they set the finished marumochi onto a plastic tray.



Thanks to the stop-and-start rhythm of the process, between frantic bouts of mochi-shaping there's plenty of time for the volunteers to talk, joke, and show off their flour-sack aprons...

The finished mochi are collected and carefully laid out by the dozen to cool on long paper-lined tables, before being packed in variety of waiting containers.

While many of these mochi will go home with mochitsuki volunteers, the event is also a fundraiser for Nichiren; the volunteers fill orders placed by other congregtions, businesses, and individuals. Orders for 2009 totalled more than 200 dozen pieces.

Some of the mochi was also kept aside to make kagami mochi, a form that is particularly important at New Year. Kagami mochi is made up of two flattened balls, the smaller one stacked on top of the larger. The name means "mirror mochi" and refers to the sacred mirrors associated with Shinto and Buddhist deities. Over the holiday, these and other symbolic offerings are displayed on home shrines and altars.

Akiko-san is Nichiren's designated kagami mochi maker; while kagami mochi are often made by priests, everyone, Reverend Cedarman included, says that Akiko-san has a special knack. Using paper templates, she carefully shaped large lumps of fresh mochi ("Hot, hot, hot!") into near-perfect discs.

Although simliar to shaping the little marumochi, making kagami mochi is much more difficult. Because these mochi are altar offerings, it is essential that they look as good as possible. The balls have to be in correct proportion to one another; they must be circular and not too fat or too flat. In order to make the surface of the mochi smooth and shiny, Akiko-san repeatedly stretched the top of the ball, pulling the excess down and tucking it underneath.



And the work isn't done even when size, shape, and surface are satisfactory; because hot mochi is a slow moving liquid, Akiko-san had to keep nudging and checking each finished shape until it cooled enough to hold its form. She laughed at my taking such a long video, pointing out that she was merely doing the same thing over and over--but it was exactly that repetetiveness--the patience, the attention to minute detail--that I found so hypnotic.

Many of the marumochi will be eaten in ozoni soup, the traditional breakfast on New Year's Day. Some will be roasted, dipped in sweetened soy sauce, and dusted with kinako soy flour--another auspicious treat. Reverend Cedarman will tend the kagami mochi on the Nichiren altars by wiping them with sake; early in the new year he will shatter the discs in a ceremony called kagami biraki.

Choco Coffee Mochi

Choco Coffee Mochi
Viet Wah Grocery, $3.50

While I don't consider myself to be a food critic, I feel honor-bound to say these are pretty awful. Since I'm a sucker for all the constituent elements of Choco Coffee Mochi, it was inevitable that I would cave in to their appeal, but my first box of these stale, over-packaged, artificially-flavored, mass-produced imports will be my last.

Zunda Mochi

Day forty-one: Zunda Mochi

I learned a new Japanese saying recently: Miyagemono ni umai mono nashi, or "Among souvenirs, there are no delicious things". I found this a little hard to get my head around; given the Japanese emphasis on giving souvenirs, packaged delicacies wallpaper every train station and airport; historically, local food souvenirs have been seen as giving the folks at home a way of participating in the journey; and surely, food gifts, no matter how undelicious, gather less dust than a snow globe?

But today gave me a little more insight. I spent most of it backtracking to Tokyo in order to take my ailing computer to the Mac store. Several hours into my train journey (I'm still stuck on local trains) I realized that I had somehow managed not to pack the fresh, delicious and expertly-made sweets that my friends at the Tokinoka Yawargi shop had set aside for me; it was like waking from a dream where you're lolling on a pile of treasure to find yourself in a single bed on IKEA sheets.

Rooting around in my bag, I managed to find a box of souvenir sweets that had been with me since Sendai. On the north end of Japan's main island, Honshu, they make something of a speciality of zunda, young, fresh soybeans that are boiled, sweetened, and ground into mealy paste. Zunda shows up in a number of incarnations, but here it is slathered over tiny balls of mochi.

There's no denying that the package was attractive, sturdy, and a welcome respite from a sweets-free day on the trains. The zunda was bright green on a scale somewhere between hi-lighter and fava, smelled of fresh chlorophyll, and tasted inoffensively sweet. But while the color shouted "freshness", the stiff, gluey texture of both the paste and the mochi whispered "extended shelf-life".

Perhaps the trick to getting delicious souvenirs is not buying foods that are packaged specifically as souvenirs?

Anzu Mochi

Day thirty-seven: Anzu Mochi
Ususkawa, ¥400 for 3

At first I balked at buying a 3-pack, but any product labeled "Sweet, sour, and cute" is pretty hard to resist. The silky mochi exterior is tinted and sculpted to resemble a small apricot (anzu); inside there's a sweet/tart mixture of white bean paste and diced apricot. I should have gotten a 6-pack.

"Amai, shoppai, amai..."

Day thirty-two:

Left: Kurumi mochi
Motsu-ji teahouse, ¥400
Right: Amazake
Chuson-ji teahouse, ¥450

Waking in Tōno to blue skies and a black-and-blue arm, I decided not to venture too far. I took the train a little south to Hiraizumi, another tiny town with two formidible tourist attractions.

My first stop was the Motsu-ji temple, where the relatively modern buildings take a backseat to the Jōdo-teien, the country's best- (or only, depending on your guidebook) preserved Heian-period garden. In the millineum since the complex was first constructed, all of the original buildings surrounding the lovely ornamental lake have burnt or fallen, granting the strolling visitor uninterrupted views of its sculpted islands and scrolling shoreline. The recent discovery and restoration of an original, pebble-lined "feeder" stream stretching down from the surrounding hills has allowed for the reinstatement of another Heian legacy; once a year participants in Heian dress seat themselves on the lawn and compose spontaneous haiku poems while drinking sake floated down the stream in tiny lacquer cups.

I ended my stroll by the teahouse, where a group of middle-aged ladies were rather racuously digging in to a range of unfamiliar treats. I searched the menu board for something identifiable and asked for kurumi mochi; with a name like "walnut rice paste" I was pretty sure I knew what I would be eating, but I had no idea what form these versatile ingredients would take. I was presented with a lacquer bowl containing three large balls of (remarkably tenacious!) rice paste blanketed by a paste of creamed walnuts and sugar, alongside a cup of tea and a tiny dish of utterly confounding white goo. I was just about to dump the goo into the mochi when the woman across the table stopped me; it turns out that the pickled daikon (radish) paste should be eaten alternately with the mochi, enhancing the sweet creaminess of the walnuts. My savior mimed eating out of first one dish, then the other, chanting, "Amai, shoppai, amai..." ("Sweet, salty, sweet...").

On the other side of town, I hiked up a steep and heavily wooded ridge to see the Chuson-ji complex's stunning centerpiece, the Konjiki-do. This ancient (1124), small-scale (15-20 feet wide) temple is filled with beautifully carved deities and coated inside and out with gold foil so thick you could use it to wrap chocolate bars. I was still seeing stars when I spotted a banner advertising amazake, a hot, sweet drink that I find even more comforting that cocoa. Making amazake can be as complicated as infecting cooked rice with a particular mold to create fuzzy/lumpy koji, mixing it with water and heating the mix for 12-24 hours before sweetening and serving, or as simple as adding hot water to a packet of dehydrated sake lees. The resulting beverages aren't really the same at all, but both are creamy in color and texture, sweet, lightly perfumed, and slightly chewy (heads up, bubble tea lovers!).

I'm no expert, but I'd guess that this amazake was made by the more painstaking of the two methods. Again the "main course" was accompanied by tea and a dish of pickles, which were a mixture of finely diced cucumber and the tiny buds of a bracing, aromatic herb called shiso. And again, the constrast of flavors and textures was a delight.