Japan Mountain Village Encounter: GET ARCHITECTS, Japan Mountain Village Encounter

A visiting friend and I explore a small village in the Japan Southern Alps and are welcomed into the home of an elderly tea farmer and his wife. The couple's son and daughter-in-law are visiting from the city and the family is busy making Japanese rice cakes called mochi. Mochi making is a very special activity in Japan and this family is making three color mochi in celebration of the Japanese holiday Girl's Day (hinamatsuri) which is a special day reserved for young girls. Girl's Day is normally celebrated on March 3rd in Japan though the people in this particular village celebrate the holiday in April due to the fact that the month of March is still rather cold and unfestive in the high mountains. Few young Japanese know how to make mochi the old fashioned way and it's a real treat for us to get to watch the family steam a special type of rice called mochikome over a wood-fired stove before pounding the rice by hand in a large wooden basin. I've tried this myself with my wife's family and I can report that the hammer is very heavy and the process much harder than it looks, as one poorly aimed swipe will strike the side of the basin and send tiny splinters of wood into the mochi and thus ruin the batch. Also, to do the job properly requires a coordinated effort between the man swinging the hammer and the woman turning the rice. Many older men in Japan take considerable pride in their ability to handle the hammer well and mochi making events within large families (like my ...

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