Mochitsuki 2009: pounding the rice cake

After the steamed rice has been mashed into one contiguous blob, the real fun begins. This is why we all love to make mochi! In Japan, my wife's family always said that it was a time to take out all of the pent up stress and negative feelings of the year. Just take it all out on the poor blob of rice. (Japan has a number of forget/release the bad of the ending year and face the New Year with a clean heart. We would burn the old chop sticks that had been new back in January. We would go to a temple to hear the bell rung 108 times to ring away the ills of the year. Company employees would go to a "bonenkai" - a drinking party where folks forgot the frictions, frustrations, failures of the past year.)
Anyway, our self-therapy is to beat the tar out of the rice on December 30th each year. :o)
Only persons of stout heart and quick arm are allowed to to the work my wife is doing here, slapping water onto the mochi to keep the mallet from sticking.
BTW: tap water introduces too much bio-mater (mold, bacteria, etc.) into the mochi. It is recommended that the water used here be sterile.

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[samugoro]

By the way, we counted in Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, a little German and English, of course.