23 December 2011- We went to an open air farmhouse museum in a park in Osaka. As we came to the final house we spotted this group of people, with tables set up as an outdoor kitchen. We looked at the house, and I went inside (taking off hiking boots is not fun, so Greg didn't.) While I was inside, one of the old ladies decided to tell Greg what they were doing. By the time I came outside, he had a bowl of vegetable miso soup, and another was on the way to me. They were making mochi- a traditional year end/new year food in japan. It is made by pounding cooked gelatinous rice into a gelatinous mass, adding flavouring (such as ginger) and shaping into cakes/balls that fit into the palm. While I have been given mochi before (it is like christmas fruit cake in that respect, given to all the neighbours), I have never made it. Mochi rice is different from normal rice. They were cooking it in a very oldfashioned bamboo steamer over a wood fire, then put in the big stone bowl and pounded with wooden mallets. It is hard work.
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