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Welcoming the New Year with Mochitsuki Festival
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Posted on Dec 28 2015
The Paseo de Marianas Promoters, Inc. began their preparation for the coming year with the Japanese Mochitsuki Festival last Saturday, which also marked the end of the Christmas in the Marianas Festival.
Using an usu, a stone stamp mill, and kine or a large wooden mallet, participants pounded mochigome—a special kind of glutinous short-grain japonica rice—to make mochi, Japanese sweet rice cake.
The ceremony began at 6pm in front of the Kinpachi Restaurant at the Paseo de Marianas.
PDM Promoters members alternately pounded the steamed rice into a very sticky mass, keeping time to the beat of a medium-sized taiko drum.
“This is the old-fashioned way of preparing mochi or rice cakes. People then shout ‘Yoisho,’ which means give me your power as the rice is being pounded,” said PDM Promoters official Misako Kamata.
The centuries-old Japanese way of making mochi requires strength, quick hands, and timing, with one person beating the mochigome while another flips and wets the glutinous mass so it won’t stick to the wooden mallet or mortar.
Timing is needed to avoid injury, as rhythm is needed in lowering the wooden mallet and swift flipping of the mochi.
Minutes of pounding the glutinous rice produced a smooth dough that is cut and prepared into small cakes. Some were wrapped in nori—a type of edible seaweed—dipped in soy sauce or cooked with red bean sauce.
Tourists and locals, along with Marianas Visitors Authority community projects manager Martin Duenas, and Department of Public Safety’s Jason Tarkong also joined in the mochi pounding.
“Making rice cakes has been part of the Japanese culture and tradition. It is an end-of-the-year ceremony to prepare for the New Year, where we eat the rice cakes,” added Kamata.
Kinpachi Restaurant staff then prepared the mochi where everyone was treated to a free taste of the sweet and delectable rice cake.
