Term · Japanese culture
Mochi
Rice beaten with a mallet until it stops being rice and becomes something that fights back.
In Otakana the clue reads: Pounded rice cake, chewy and sweet
- Type
- Term
- Series
- Japanese culture
- Letters
- 5 · Easy
Making it is violent. Steamed glutinous rice goes into a heavy wooden mortar, one person swings a long mallet, and another reaches in between swings to turn and wet the mass by hand. The rhythm of that pairing is the whole trick, and getting it wrong is how you break a wrist. The result is smooth, elastic and stretches a long way before it gives.
New Year is its season. A kagami mochi, two stacked rounds with a bitter orange on top, sits as a decoration until January, when it gets broken apart and eaten in soup. Ozoni, the new year soup, is regional to the point of argument, and Japanese families will defend their broth against the next prefecture's without much prompting.
The texture has a body count. Every January hospitals report choking cases, mostly among the elderly, and the news runs the same warning about cutting it small and chewing properly. Sweet versions are gentler: daifuku wrapped around red bean paste, and the ice cream shell that took the word into supermarkets worldwide.
Spelling MOCHI
MOCHI is five letters and the CH is one kana, chi, so nothing doubles and no T sneaks in. The final I is short, mo-chi, and the word does not end on a Y sound however English wants to hear it. Both vowels are different, O then I, which makes it a useful guess on a day you are hunting vowels.