So what do you do when you have to spend your first Christmas away from home in 23 years? Spend it with the other people that are away from home! There is certainly no time like Christmas that puts the "foreign" in foreign country. So for Christmas, coming from our respective prefectures, we all traveled to Karuizawa to create 'Little America', and celebrate Christmas together, the way we know and love. It was a fun time, and that may be the last time that all of us will be together, as some of the people you see in the picture will be returning to America.
Happy New Years! And what better way to bring in the New Year by taking a large hammer, and hitting a big pile of rice! No, I'm not joking... In this picture, I am helping to make mochi; a traditional Japanese New Years food. It's essentially hammered rice, until it turns into a dough-like paste. It's rolled into balls, and usually eaten with kinako powder, which I don't know how to explain, or anko, which is a sweet red bean. It's much more delicious than I'm aware it sounds when I describe it. We also made a soup-thing, which I too don't really know how to describe. It's kind of like Japanese nabe, but that doesn't help either, does it... That's why I took video! So, maybe just watch it and then you can see. The people in the video are upperclassmen, and/or BEST alumni.Here is a video of me making mochi. It may look easy, but you have to be very careful not to hit the wooden rim of the bowl, or you could crack the bowl (which is very expensive) or the hammer (probably expensive too)
Here is a video of my good friend Shige making mochi also. The people in the background are not really saying anything, but they were trying to start a rhythm that just became funny.
This is the soup being made. It tasted very good despite the fact that it contained vegetables that I didn't even know existed...
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