Aden's and Christian's Kudo instructor invited us to a Rice Pounding Party, that he threw for the end of the year for all of his students. They had their last practice of the year outside, right before the party. It didn't last long because it was freezing.
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| Here is the wooden bowl that they pound the rice in. |
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| All of the Kudo students at the party. |
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| Before they put the rice in, they soaked the inside of the bowl part in water, and let it get the wood and mallet nice and wet, so that the rice wouldn't stick. |
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| Aden's Kudo instructor. |
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| Sense's daughter |
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| Here they have added the sticky rice, and started pounding it. |
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| They take turns pounding it for about 30 minutes. It looks like quite the workout. |
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| Another person has to be there to flip the burning hot rice between poundings. I'm sure it didn't feel good on the hands. The rice was steaming. They had to keep the rice from sticking to the wood, so it was constantly being turned. |
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| Everyone got a turn. |
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| After it was done, they served a Japanese lunch, incorporating the mochi (pounded rice). |
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| Here is what it looks like when done. |
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| The men do the rice pounding, and the women all do the preparation and cooking in the kitchen. |
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| They added flour and separated it into individual pieces. |
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| This is a sweet red bean sauce that they poured on top. It was good. |
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| Here is what one of the things looks like. The Mochi is very tough to chew (like taffy), so it is not great for small kids. A lot of kids choke on it. |
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| They rolled them in some sort of spice here. |
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| Aden can use chopsticks now. |
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| They eat a lot of soups here. This is one that they added mochi to. |
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| They had two games that are traditional for giving the sweets at the end. This one each person can chose a string. They pull on that string, and it determines if they get a small, medium or large sugar cookie. |
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| Ailsey got a medium, and Aden got a small. |
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| This is another game, where the kids got to pull a pink tab off of that paper. It would determine if they got a small or large pastry, and what kind. |
