All About Mochi

Well I was going to post some pictures of the December OSC event, but I looked at them again, and they're really bad. I mean really really bad. The event was a Christmas party (surprise?) at the restaraunt on base, and it's really hard to get good pictures in there. If you use a flash, they all come out super dark, and so I didn't, but the result is really blurry pictures of some really pretty fan dancing. So you'll have to imagine the fan dancers who came to perform. We were also visited by Santa, who made a valiant effort to get everyone there to be a little more outgoing. We resisted, though, so he finally gave up and gave us all our presents (we did a really simple gift exchange). I got sushi shaped ornaments for the Christmas tree that I swear I'll have next year. They're very cute.

Anyway, on Sunday our Japanese neighbors had a party in the parking area outside their house (next to the old tako stand). This is highly unusual behavior for our Japanese neighbors, so I spent a good deal of my day spying on them as I casually passed. The first time, when we left for church, they had a small wood stove set out and a roaring fire going in it. The next time, when we came back from church, they had something set out to steam on the fire, which wasn't threatening to destroy the whole house anymore. In each of these cases, two or three people were standing near the fire supervising, but it could have been no big deal.

Most intriguing of all was when I took Dory to the park that afternoon. By then a ton of people were hanging around, and many of them had plates of food. Most were gathered around a huge wooden barrel set up just far enough back into the parking area that I couldn't see what was inside without being obviously nosey. Two people stood on opposite sides of this barrel holding wooden hammer-like things that were may be as long as my arm. They would raise these over their heads and slam them into the contents of the barrel in rhythm, apparently mashing something up. I was fascinated, but Dory was terrified, so I went back inside. All afternoon, I could hear the sound of those mallets beating the contents of that barrel. By evening, everyone was gone.

So at my adult class that night, I described what I saw to my students and asked them what the heck was going on. It took them a few minutes to figure out what I was describing, but they finally got it worked out and informed me that what I saw was the old fashioned way to make mochi, a traditional Japanese New Year's food. Apparently, most people now either buy it premade or have a mochi machine that makes the stuff at the push of a button. However, some community groups or school groups still make it at this time of year by hand, just to let people see how it used to be done.
Mochi, I knew before this experience, is a rice paste that is traditionally eaten around New Years. It usually comes shaped in a round ball and is a little bit sweet in flavor. It's simple and pretty good. Every year, most families used to place two balls of mochi stacked with an orange (a small one) on top on a family alter for the ancestors or the gods. They also eat it at New Years celebrations. My students informed me that in the old days (may be 20 or 30 years ago) people would make mochi by steaming rice and then mashing in barrels like the one I saw (my students say that it was actually a small version of the old ones), adding water occasionally, in much the same way that one might make mashed potatoes on a large scale. Then you form it into whatever shape you so desire (it's fairly doughy) and add whatever ingredients you happen to like.
I also learned that different regions of Japan add different things to their mochi when they make it. Since basic mochi is just rice, it can be flavored in a multitude of ways. In Kyushu, the tendency is to make it sweeter by adding a little sugar or red beans. It can also be baked to make it a little crunchy, or rolled in various seasonings. In other regions, they make it saltier. One student said that her favorite way to eat mochi is dipped in a mixture of soy sauce and sugar. Another said she liked it rolled in seaweed powder. Some people put red beans inside and bake it. It really just depends on what you like, I guess.
Finally, I learned that mochi is made using a special kind of rice (mochi rice), which is the stickiest, wettest rice you can buy. So if you go to an Asian market and buy yourself some mochi rice, you're getting the stuff they use to make this rice paste stuff, and you should expect it to cook up super wet, not suitable for fried rice, but excellent for onigiri.
As a side note to the mochi story, I learned that when Japanese people look at a full moon, the craters and what not on it look like a rabbit making mochi to them. I told my students that I would look for that the next time I saw a full moon, and they doubtfully told me it takes a lot of imagination to see. I still thought it was very creative, though. Way cooler than a face. I can't say for sure that my students learned much from me Sunday night, but I learned a lot from them, so it was a fun class. Now I get a whole week off to rest before the New Year rolls around. I think I'll have to go buy some mochi.

For the Crafty Folk

One of the many reasons I like my college level class is that they are a group of rational adult students who like to do all the preschool type activities (these are students who are getting a degree to become preschool teachers). So I can play with them like I would with a younger class, but I can also talk to them like grown ups. It's really really fun.
Of course, we did a lesson (two actually) on Christmas this year. First we translated Christmas songs, then we talked about some Christmas vocabulary and did word searches and crosswords. Then we got to craft time. I gave my students two simple craft suggestions. First, I showed them how to make snowflakes. They, of course, are far better snowflake makers than me. Then, I showed them how to make a paper chain of people. I did a very simple one with a stick figure, more or less, and then gave them all paper and scissors and told them to have fun. Here are the results:
First, we have a really cute variation on the person theme...

Then they expanded out on the same idea (this one really blew my mind)...

Then they decided, why stop at human-like figures? And we got into some Christmas symbols:


I was really impressed by their creativity and talent. For people who were (as best I can tell) doing this for the first time, it was really quite amazing. :-) It made for a fun class.

December ILC

In December, the Americans hosted the ILC event. We, of course (and by popular request), did a Christmas theme. Several ladies decorated their houses and we gave the Japanese women a tour of them. I didn't get to go on said tour because I was setting up for the lunch part, but I hear it was quite lovely. At lunch itself, we had a cookie decorating station that turned out to be a lot of fun:


Several of our members also dressed up in honor of the season. Aren't they cute!

We also got the 1st and 2nd graders from the school on base to come sing some Christmas songs for us while we had our lunch. They were quite adorable! The singing was very cute, too.

So it was a very busy time, making sure everything was running smoothly and keeping all the various pieces in place, but I think everyone enjoyed it.

Christmas Lost in Translation

I am being especially reluctant to upload pictures from my camera to the computer before the month of December is over, meaning that a lot of the Christmas Party posts are sort of in hold. Here's some holiday cheer to tide you over: two stories from the conversational English classes I teach.
Story 1: Every week in my conversation classes we have listening time, where we listen to some sort of CD and then discuss what we've heard. This month, listening time has consisted of Christmas songs, and one Wednesday I asked the three students in my adult class what they wanted to hear (all of my classes are pretty small like that). This class is fairly high level, so I was confident they'd be able to learn from wathever song they chose. They picked Silent Night.
The version of Silent Night that we had a copy of had two verses. The first verse is the one everyone knows, the next verse went like this:
Silent night, holy night
Shepherd's quake at the sight.
Glory streams from heaven afar.
Heavenly hosts sing "Alleluia."
Christ the Savior is born.
We listened to this verse one line at a time, allowing students to repeat back what they had heard. I wrote down the words on a white board. When the verse was over, I gave them a short summary in simple words (the Shepherds are shaking as they look on....) I asked the students if they had any questions.
To my surprise, the student who used to be an English teacher (and is highly fluent) asked "Why were the shepherds shaking?"
I explained that they were afraid because the angels were talking to them.
"Why did the angels talk to shepherds?" the man asked next.
I launched into a very simplified version of the Nativity story, explaining that Bethlehem was in the country, so there would have been shepherds in the surrounding area... that's where we hit the road block again. The class couldn't figure out why shepherds would be around. I explained that there would be a lot of sheep so there would be people there to take care of them.
"Oh!" the former English teacher exclaimed, "A shepherd is a person?"
Apparently, in Japanese English, a shepherd is always a dog, like a German Shepherd, or a sheep dog. There aren't a lot of sheep in Japan (and the ones that are here were imported), so the concept of a person called a shepherd never made it into their vocabulary. I explained what a shepherd was, and everything made much more sense. I laughed all the way home at the mental image of angels talking to a bunch of dogs about going to see a baby in a manger....

Story 2: It's listening time again, in a different class. This is another adult class, and we've been discussing the idea of Santa riding in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, so I decide to put on the song Rudolf. I know this song will be hard for the class, so I start out with a quick version of the story of Rudolf. I explain that he's a reindeer with a red nose and so on. I figure things must be going pretty well because 3 of the 4 students are nodding pretty consistantly and making the "I understand" noise that Japanese people make when learning something new.
I finish and get ready to play the CD and the 4th student says something in Japanese to her friend, who laughs then replies in Japanese. Then everyone bursts into laughter. Every time I'd said the name "Rudolf" this one student had been hearing the Japanese word for tofu (Odofu). She'd gotten the basic story about how there's a reindeer with a red nose, but she couldn't figure out how tofu factored into the story. Once her friend explained that the reindeer's name is Rudolf, it was all clear to her, but she was quite confused for awhile.
So I ride home that afternoon with a picture in my head of Tofu the red nosed reindeer... I still haven't worked out how she could even follow the rest of the story with that in her head. Next time, I'll be sure to start by explaining the name...

Thanksgiving with JAFCO

Yes, I know, I'm a little behind, here, but soon I'll be back in the right season, I promise.
Anyway, JAFCO, the company I work for, had a party to celebrate Thanksgiving in an effort to give the students a chance to speak English somewhere other than the classroom... also to allow them to try turkey, since it's not a common dish in Japan and most had never had it before. The planning process was quite something. They ordered food from two places on base, plus making some things at home. We had around 35 lbs of Turkey (25ish were baked traditionally, and 10ish fried cajun style from Popeyes), 10ish lbs of ham, mashed potatoes (three different kinds, actually), stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, red beans and rice, bread, pie (pumpkin, apple, and peach), and some Japanese goodies for the foreigners who showed up. Here's a picture of the spread:

The students brought supplies and made fresh tempura while they were there. Okambo San and Yamaguchi San were responsible for making salad and grating daikon (Japanese radish) for the tempura:

Kumano San was one of our tempura friers. It was nice and fresh.

The party was a lot of fun. The food was good, and it was nice to see a bunch of my students in a non-class setting. Probably the most fun, though, was watching the students try to figure out what all that American stuff was. I was repeatedly asked what stuffing is (thankfully, I'd consulted our Family Cookbook and knew most of the basic ingredients), and no one was quite sure what to do with gravy until a nearby American would take a scoop and drench their whole plate.
But the funniest, to me, was cranberry sauce. I have to start by saying I love the stuff. Zack doesn't eat it, so since it arrived in our commisary, I've been buying a can or two at a time and then eating it straight from the can over the course of several days. To me, the appropriate way to eat cranberry sauce is plain, with a spoon or fork. The Japanese people would not believe that this was a good plan. Here's what they did with it:

Apparently, it makes decent jelly. Who knew?
On a side note, JAFCO also had a Christmas party for which they ordered a lot of American food (and I forgot to bring my camera). They decided to forgo the cranberry the second time around. :-)

Sumoo!

Tis the season for Sumoo! Every year in November, they have a tournament in Fukuoka. This year, Zack got to come see it, too. Basically, two teams of wrestlers face off, and every wrestler on one team has one match with every wrestler on the other team over the course of two weeks. This year, we went about halfway through the tournament. It was a lot of fun. Here's one of the teams:

The matches all take place under this roof because sumoo used to be a purely religious event (Shinto). There's still a lot of ceremony involved.

Before each match, the wrestlers face off like this:

And here's an action shot:

I think this year's matches were potentially better than last year's even. Twice, the judges had to get together and confer before picking a winner. Once, they decided to have a do over. It was really quite exciting to watch.

November ILC

The week we arrived back in Sasebo, I went to our monthly ILC event. I had been very slightly bummed about the fact that I missed this year's Yosakoi festival while I was in Hawaii, so I was delighted that the entertainment for this month's ILC included a group of Yosakoi dancers. Yosakoi, for those of you who may not remember, is a dance festival held every year in Sasebo at the end of October. Groups come from all over the place and perform in the streets, on stages, and down town. They are judged (don't ask me how) and win prizes, presumably. I just like to watch it all. It's very difficult to describe, and even pictures don't really explain the draw, but it's a lot of fun to watch. Here's the group who came to ILC:

After the dancers had performed, there were several little games that we all played. The host group split us all into teams (the Americans were their own team) and we competed a little. I really can't remember why. Anyway, the first event was a game of telephone which I believe the Americans lost by a ton. Next was a game involving keeping this paper balloon in the air, relay style:

Then there was a great version of musical chairs guaranteed to cause multiple concussions. These lovely paper flowers were placed on the floor in the middle of a circl of women:

The music started, and the women walked around the flowers. When the music stopped, the women would dive to try to get a flower (there were several less than the number of women in the circle, of course). The result looked something like this:

I got out of that game by pointing to my (now somewhat visible) baby bump, and it was hysterical to watch. How often do you see grown women throwing themselves at the floor in an attempt to get a paper flower? There were some bumps and bruises, but no one was seriously hurt, and I think everyone had fun. I certainly enjoyed watching.