Tastes a Bit Like Glue, Actually

While my Christmas holiday was quiet and relaxing, my New Year’s was filled with traditional Japanese activities. A few days prior to the new year, the lady that I sublet from, Ito-san, flew into town to celebrate the holiday with her family and very graciously offered to sleep in the spare room allowing me to stay in the apartment during her stay. Though she was often out visiting her friends and family, I enjoyed having the opportunity to finally meet her face to face and get to know her better.

I may have mentioned before, Ito-san is a poet and translator who now lives in California with her Polish husband, a graphic artist, and her youngest daughter. As you would imagine, she’s well-traveled and very knowledgeable on a variety of subjects – a really fascinating person to talk to.

But back to the holidays, my New Year’s holiday began a couple days early on December 30th with the mochitsuki. Mochitsuki is a traditional mochi-pounding ceremony in Japan, most often performed for the New Year. Rice is soaked overnight and steamed, then kneaded and pounded into a sticky paste. To do this, two or three people use wooden mallets (kine) in a large mortar (usu) while another person occasionally turns and wets the mochi. Once it is fully beaten and reaches the right consistency, the sticky mass is quickly turned over to a person or group of people to form into different shapes, usually a flattened sphere. Sometimes, the mochi dumpling is filled with sweet bean paste (anko), then it is called daifuku. To get an idea of what mochi tastes like, imagine salt-water taffy, but without any flavoring or saltiness, and covered in flour. It’s not the best description, but about as close as I can come. It’s not my favorite Japanese food.

Mochitsuki is one of those traditions that is gradually becoming lost as urban areas grow larger and the rural areas shrink, but in my apartment building - a co-op - their goal is to recreate that smaller community setting. Therefore that Tuesday afternoon, the 40 or so residents and several of their friends gathered in the deck / patio area of the building to make mochi. They built three small fires using bamboo from the small woods behind the building: one for the rice steamer, one to heat water used in the kneading and pounding of the mochi, and one for a big pot of pork and vegetable soup to feed everyone. The weather was nice and sunny, the soup was delicious, and good time was had by all.

They made mochi for each of the families in the building, so they went through the process described above 14 times - once for each family, not including me. They put me to work once in shaping the mochi which was fun, and once in pounding the mochi with the kine which was a blast. It was also quite tiring and more than slightly nerve-wracking. Swinging this heavy wooden mallet along with two other guys and one guy occasionally reaching in to wet and turn the mochi, keeping the rhythm was incredibly important as you could imagine.

Pictures of my mochitsuki experience can be found on my Flickr site, http://www.flickr.com/photos/25083690@N03/sets/72157612803645309/

New Year’s Eve isn’t really as big of an event here in Japan as it is in the U.S. I hopped the bus downtown in the afternoon only to discover that many of the shops and smaller restaurants were closed. It reminded me of walking around downtown Pasadena after 4 pm on New Year’s Eve with all of the shops and restaurants closed and windows boarded up in preparation for the next day’s parade. Actually, it’s a lot like Christmas Eve in the U.S. Though there are some celebrations, the day is mostly spent in travel and preparation for the next day.

Anyway, though the downtown slightly resembled a ghost town, a few of the larger department stores were open as well as Tsutaya, the book store that has saved my sanity since I’ve come to Japan.

Side note: An American issue of Vogue magazine costs $21 here. Time Magazine is $17. And while the English book selection is fairly diverse, it’s pretty hit and miss. The only Hemingway they carry is The Sun Also Rises; the only Austen is Northanger Abbey; no Stephen King. But they do have the entire Gossip Girl series and all of Roald Dahl’s books. Go figure.

After perusing the books and picking up a couple new pens for school, I walked across the street to an Indian restaurant that one of my friends recommended. I’m new to Indian cuisine, but count me among converted. I am a fan. My meal of spice rubbed lamb cooked in a tandoor served with rice and garlic naan was amazing. I returned last weekend and had a terrific, if extremely spicy, seafood curry.

That evening, I relaxed with a glass of wine and a plate of cheese, crackers, and summer sausage that my parents had sent me for Christmas and watched a bit of the traditional year-end music countdown on television. This had been mentioned by many of my friends and co-workers, so I suppose it’s considered kind of the traditional thing to do on New Year’s Eve. It was interesting and I was kind of surprised how many of the songs I recognized from hearing them over the radio at lunch. After a bit though, I switched to the DVD player and watched Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Tom Stoppard is my hero.

Well, I was planning to finish New Year’s with this post, but it’s getting fairly long and I need to get this posted, so I suppose New Year’s Day will just have to wait.

Album(s) currently playing on my IPOD –In honor of the Presidential Inauguration, I have been listening to America (The Audiobook): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction. A wonderful combination of wit and sarcasm, America (The Audiobook) works perfectly to temper the almost overwhelming sense of hope and optimism of Obama’s inauguration. Even if you’ve read the book, I highly suggest listening to the audiobook. The narration by Jon Stewart and the other Daily Show contributors give it a whole new snarky dimension.

In a slightly more conventional vein, Antonin Dvorak’s 1893 String Quartet No. 12 “American” has also found its way onto my playlist. Performed by the Smetana String Quartet, it’s beautiful.

Current reading material – I just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut’s 1997 novel / memoir, Timequake. I’ll confess, this is only the second Vonnegut novel I’ve read, not to mention a few of his short stories. That said, I consider him one of my favorite authors. His writing always seems so effortless. No matter if he is writing about becoming unstuck in time and traveling to the planet Tralfamadore or if he’s writing about his family, it never seems like he is laboring over the words. This is particularly interesting considering Vonnegut freely admits his struggle to write Timequake lasted almost 10 years only to realize that the finished product was crap. So, the novel published, Timequake, is parts of the original novel combined with personal observations and antidotes. It’s just hilarious and incredibly easy to read. I finished it in two sittings.