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Stephanie- Making Mochi in Kagawa

Making Mochi in Kagawa

After visiting Kyoto we went to Kagawa prefecture, which is on an island (I am aware that in Japan one is always on an island, but this is a separate island, Shikoku) so to get there you drive over this amazing bridge that connects the prefectures. It's called the Great Seto Bridge and is actually comprised of a set of six bridges connecting the smaller islands in between and is collectively almost 6 miles long. It also has two levels with a four lane expressway on top and trains that run on the bottom. Impressive.
In Kagawa we visited friends of my host family from Hippo and learned how to make mochi. Mochi is a traditional Japanese food that is a little hard to explain if you've never had it; it's a kind of gummy ball made from pounded rice, and you can eat it in a lot of different ways. A few ways that I have had it are: filled with anko (a sweet bean paste), with Japanese radish, soy sauce and peanut powder, warm and sticky in soup, and on a stick covered in a sugar/soy sauce mixture. It's a really different texture than anything in the U.S. and I love it! It's also a very traditional food associated with the New Year holiday.

Making Mochi:
  
 
After making and eating mochi all afternoon we had a mochiyori (potluck) party at our friends' house with lots of other Hippo members from the area, where we ate more mochi (along with other things), and talked and shared experiences for a good part of the night. It was pretty amazing to travel to a completely different area of Japan and be welcomed into a group of people I had never met before that felt like a big extended family. Everyone was so welcoming and excited to meet my family and I and hear about our life in Wisconsin. I think that the sense of community and family is one of the things that impresses me most about Hippo.

*Interesting fact: Rather than seeing the face of a man in the moon as Americans do, Japanese people see a rabbit pounding mochi. 
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