Mochi, with a Pinch of Stardust and Potions

FOR MAUDLIN INTROSPECTION, BEGIN READING HERE.

So this week sucked.  Not because of anything going on here, mind you.  Life here is the same as usual.  But the world lost two great artists, David Bowie and Alan Rickman, within a few days of one another, and that`s a sad thing.  Both of these men were very much ingrained into my teenage years thanks to Labyrinth and the Harry Potter films, and while we still have those, it`s an incredible downer to know that these men will no longer dazzle us in new ways.  As I said to Ros last night (before I vowed never to check my Facebook or Twitter before bed ever again, because upsetting news before you try to sleep just makes it worse), if someone else dies shortly or one of my unwed celebrity crushes gets engaged, no amout of ice cream will fix this.

That comment really made me stop and question myself for a few minutes (well, honestly I`m still questioning).  Normally, I have all the emotional capacity of a Vulcan nearing Kolinahr.  The only emotions I achieve easily are frustration and anger (excitement, if a Disney park is involved).  Most of the time I`m just this five-foot package of almost Zen-level contentment, emotionally neutral.  I laugh easily, sure, but I don`t have ...  Hm.  I don`t have a lot of deep attachments, I guess is the best way to put it?  Either positive or negative.  So when I actually feel really upset about the deaths of these two people whom I was familiar with only because of their work, whom I had never met...  It just seems really weird and out of character for me.  Then I think about all the other times something like this has happened, and how I was affected then, too.  Why am I so hung up on these people who I have never met, will probably never meet (the live ones, more of the celebrity crushes, I mean; obviously I will never meet the dead ones)?  Objectively, I get celebrity culture and the way it works.  It stems from fantasy, escapism, things like that (Woody Allen`s The Purple Rose of Cairo does a great job of demonstrating this).  But to find myself wrapped up in it to the same extent is just... odd.  I mean, I live for fantasy, and I spend more time in my head than I do in the real world, but...  No, maybe that`s exactly it.  Maybe I`m more attached to fantasies, to people I have no real connection to, because I spend more time with them than I do with real people around me in the real world.  Huh.  That`s... somewhat depressing, and perhaps a little scary.  Maybe I should work on that.

TO SKIP THE MAUDLIN INTROSPECTION, BEGIN READING HERE.

Leaving my introspection behind (if I ignore it, it`ll go away), the rest of this week has been pretty awesome.  Saturday was grocery day, nothing particularly exciting there.  On Sunday, I went to Ise because they were doing some New Years-related activities all weekend.  I was interested in seeing the mochi pounding event because mochi is everywhere at New Years in Japan, and I`ve heard many people over the years talk about mochi pounding. 

For anyone who has seen Big Hero 6, this is Mochi:

But the cat is actually named after a traditional Japanese food.  Mochi comes from mochigome, which is a very sticky rice.  So basically the rice is cooked, and congeals, and then is ceremoniously pounded into a paste and then shaped, usually into a small ball or dumpling-type shape.  The texture is probably somewhere between a prepared bowl of instant oatmeal and a balloon.  It also doesn`t taste like much on its own, because it`s just rice, so it`s usually filled with something, coated in something, or served in something to make it palatable.  Most common are mochi filled with bean paste, mochi with kinako (soy flour, with a taste that very much reminds me of butterscotch or peanut butter.  I`m moderately obsessed with it), and mochi in sweet red bean soup. 

So back to Sunday.  I arrived in the folk village in Ise in time to catch the end of a taiko drum performance, which was really cool.  I love listening to these drums. 

After that, I meandered the shops for a while, and headed over to the shrine for a visit, and to pick up the hamaya. Literally, hamaya is "demon-breaking arrow", but basically it`s a charm to ward off misfortune and attract good luck in the shape of an arrow.  It usually also has a charm with the Chinese zodiac animal for that year.  So I did all of that, and made my way back to the village area to see if I couldn`t find this mochi thing.  I hadn`t seen the events schedule when I was there for the drums earlier, which turned out to be because I was standing right in front of it with my back to the stupid thing.  When I got there, I had just missed the last demonstration (they were finishing the line of people for free mochi), but there was another one starting in a bit less than an hour.  So I grabbed a steamed dumpling from a vendor (I think it was pork, but it might have been chicken; all I know for sure is that it was delicious) and took a seat near the front of the pavilion to wait.  My friend Jaclyn kept me company through the wait via Facebook messages.  As the performers/mochi pounders were setting up, one of the men from the group was looking through the audience and choosing children to come up and participate in the mochi pounding.  This was awesome, and adorable, and I was excited to see the tiny children using the giant mallet because that would be even more adorable...  And then he saw me.  Me, the lone, pasty, dark blond/light brown haired foreigner right near the front of the crowd.  And I was chosen.

Mochi Guy:  Please.  Please come. *gestures*
Me: Uh...  *deer in headlights look*
Old Lady Next To Me: Go, go!  *giant smile on her face on my behalf*
Me: O....kay?

So I pounded mochi.  I wish I had some good pictures and video of the professionals, but it was difficult from where I was standing at the side of the stage with the small children (and let me tell you how awkward that felt).  You`ll have to make do with a YouTube video of the process. 

(PS, this is actually the group I saw, just in a different place.  The old guy turning the mochi and handling the water is the one who called me out.)

But because I was obviously alone there, one of the other guys in the group offered to take photos for me when it was my turn.  I`ve heard people say it`s really difficult to do (pound mochi, I mean, not take photos of me).  I didn`t find the actual motion of the pounding difficult.  My problem was trying to keep a proper rhythm up with the song they were singing and the man in the front, whose job is to reach in and turn the mochi between pounds.  On a regular day, I have all the rhythm of a drunk, deaf chicken.  With a heavy mallet in my hands and a hundred unfamiliar eyes staring at me?  Yeah, that clearly wasn`t going to happen.  But no one died, I didn`t send the mallet flying, and I didn`t seem to do worse than any of the small Japanese children, so I`m calling it a win. 

The mochi we pounded was then served as two different flavours.  The first (which I originally thought was bitter green tea, but according to my supervisor is some kind of local seaweed variety) was gross.  I already don`t like mochi very much, and adding to that some nasty kind of water plant?  Not cool.  Plus it was green.  The second piece, though, was kinako, and that was alright (see aforementioned obsession with the stuff).  Overall experience? Pounding mochi is fun, but I still don`t like eating it.

Monday was a holiday already (Coming of Age Day, to celebrate all of the people who have turned 20 in the past year), so I relaxed, did my laundry...  Normal boring weekend-type things.  On Tuesday I was at the hospital, where I taught the kids about New Years in Canada.  Which was extremely underwhelming to them, I think, because we don`t really do anything, you know?  Not like here, with all of the tradition and gravity they have.  I brought pictures I found online from downtown Toronto, showing the rink at Nathan Phillips Square, and the fireworks at midnight, but I had to explain that that`s not really a normal thing outside of big cities, and that my family doesn`t really do much.  I also had to explain that there aren`t traditional New Years foods in Canada (obviously, though, I`m partial to a New Years pizza).  I told the English teacher at the hospital, Itou-sensei, about my adventure in Ise, and she said I should have tried it in the red bean soup!  I nearly threw up a little at the thought of it.  She also said that it`s apparently popular to put in minestrone in place of noodles.  This is a much less disgusting thought, but I`m still going to stick to noodles, thanks.

Wednesday and Thursday were not particularly exciting.  I`m working on a special project that I`m not allowed to talk about yet, but it mostly involved sitting quietly, and being paid to read or knit.

I didn`t have any normal classes today, since it`s my first day here this week, and my lesson for next week is already planned.  The topic is a bit dense (the Great Sphinx, and the damage being caused by the rising salt water table), so I want to wait to see how well they do with this lesson before planning the next part of it.  I had my first lesson for the students going to Australia in the spring today.  We covered what they would need to know to clear Customs and Immigration (my specialty!  Yay!).  We have seven students going, plus the art teacher who doesn`t really speak English (I have extra lessons scheduled with him, starting at the end of the month, so that he can at least read through his introduction speech when he arrives). They seemed to enjoy the lesson, which was good.  It was straight from the traveling-student-textbook, though, so it didn't really require much prep from me.  But having a tiny class like that, where they're all genuinely eager to learn because the need to use it is imminent... Yeah, that was pretty great.

And that`s about it.  I might go back to Ise again this weekend, because they`re doing lion dances in the folk village, but I probably won`t.  I`ll probably just end up being lazy and staying home.  Maybe I`ll watch Labyrinth and Harry Potter...