On the following Thursday I met a Japanese friend for lunch at a shabu-shabu restaurant. Shabu-shabu is basically meat that is cooked for a short time in boiling broth which is at the table. The meat is supposed to be thin enough that you can cook it in a few seconds, and the name is supposedly the sound that the meat makes when you splash it around in the broth. The restaurant we went to was all-you-can eat for 90 minutes, so we ate lots of meat, veggies, mushrooms, and even some sushi. It was probably the best meal that I've had in Japan. It was good practice for my Japanese too because we spoke almost no English the whole time.
On Sunday I returned to the church of the previous week, which held a special Thanksgiving/autumn harvest service. This time there were about 30 people in attendance, which felt like a lot of people in the small sanctuary. After the service there was a meal, but first there was a mochitsuki. Mochi is cooked rice that has been pounded into dough, shaped, and then given different flavors. The rice was first cooked, and then it was poured into a log that had been hollowed into a bowl on one side. The rice was pounded with a large, heavy mallet. The children participated in this part, but the mallet was too heavy for most of them to lift alone. I pounded the rice too, and it felt strange to release so much energy to the end of a violent pounding.
The mochi hardens quickly, so once it was judged to be sufficiently pounded, it was brought inside and different flavors were added to it. The kind that I tried was wrapped in nori (dried seaweed) and dipped in soy sauce. Other flavors included being coated with sesame seeds or kinako, which is a flour of roasted soybeans that is apparently somewhat sweet. I didn't try either one. The texture of mochi is extremely chewy and the center of the mochi is bland, creating the unpleasant sensation of chewing for a long time on something without taste. Apparently every year many elderly people choke to death on mochi because of its consistency.
I didn't stay for the church meal because I had told my friends that I would join them in making pizza at a friend's apartment. We made some bacon-mushroom pizza that was mediocre in every aspect except for the mushrooms. After that we danced and talked and I played the guitar. It was a really nice Sunday.
On Sunday I returned to the church of the previous week, which held a special Thanksgiving/autumn harvest service. This time there were about 30 people in attendance, which felt like a lot of people in the small sanctuary. After the service there was a meal, but first there was a mochitsuki. Mochi is cooked rice that has been pounded into dough, shaped, and then given different flavors. The rice was first cooked, and then it was poured into a log that had been hollowed into a bowl on one side. The rice was pounded with a large, heavy mallet. The children participated in this part, but the mallet was too heavy for most of them to lift alone. I pounded the rice too, and it felt strange to release so much energy to the end of a violent pounding.
The mochi hardens quickly, so once it was judged to be sufficiently pounded, it was brought inside and different flavors were added to it. The kind that I tried was wrapped in nori (dried seaweed) and dipped in soy sauce. Other flavors included being coated with sesame seeds or kinako, which is a flour of roasted soybeans that is apparently somewhat sweet. I didn't try either one. The texture of mochi is extremely chewy and the center of the mochi is bland, creating the unpleasant sensation of chewing for a long time on something without taste. Apparently every year many elderly people choke to death on mochi because of its consistency.
I didn't stay for the church meal because I had told my friends that I would join them in making pizza at a friend's apartment. We made some bacon-mushroom pizza that was mediocre in every aspect except for the mushrooms. After that we danced and talked and I played the guitar. It was a really nice Sunday.
