お正月 (oshogatsu)

Oshougatsu =New Years in Japanese

This year (or last year? What should I say?) I went to my friend’s house in Kagawa for New Years. The year before I went home and the year before that I went to Guam with my friend, so this was my first time experiencing a real Japanese New Year with a real Japanese family, in a real-ly cold place. (>_<)

My friend’s uncle manages a farm and grows and sells rice. We used that rice (which is the best rice I’ve ever tasted, and yes, different rice tastes differently, even if it’s the same color) to make mochi. The steamed the rice in these old-school rice cookers outside and then put the hot rice in this mochi-making machine. Traditionally, rice is pounded in a giant mortar until it is soft and sticky, but the machine is much faster. Besides, it was really cold outside. 

My friend’s grandma owns a little shop by a famous shrine in Kagawa where she sells soft serve, shaved ice, and these sweet red bean cakes called “oban-yaki.” We used the anko (red beans) from her restaurant to make anko-mochi. It was sooo good. The mochi was fresh and hot and the anko was not too sweet. My friend’s mom even bought strawberries to make ichigo daifuku.

So good.

We also used red-grain rice called “aka-mai” and a type of seaweed, “ao-nori,” to make different kinds of mochi. 

Did I mention that it was snowing that day??? The snow even piled up from the night before! It really felt like winter! Although next year I definitely want to go some place warm for New Years.

The next day (Dec 31) we prepared all the foods for the New Years Day celebration.

I always went to our family friends’ house on New Year’s Day in America and had osechi-ryori (traditional Japanese NYD meal) Nikkei-style. I didn’t know how similar it actually was to the real thing!

We had tamago-yaki (one was even cooked with anago, salt-water eel, in the middle!), konbu, kuro mame (for good luck!), kamaboko (fish cake), tai fish, pork, some kind of fish parts, nimono, and most importantly, ozouni soup.

Ozouni is a simple soup made with mochi. We used the handmade mochi from yesterday. Each region has a different way of preparing ozouni soup. In Kagawa, they use anko-mochi in a miso-broth soup. The anko adds texture and sweetness to the soup and the mochi is sticky but melts in your mouth. It was sooo good. I got to bring back some mochi and made ozouni soup at my house a couple times. The only problem is if you eat too much of it, it’s kind of hard to digest….

Check out these pics of the feast!

I made the kamaboko plate! We cut pieces of kamaboko and stuffed them with shiso leaves and ikura or mentaiko. I ate plain ones since I don’t like fish eggs.

Apparently if you eat all of these foods on New Years, you will have good luck for the year. 

I hope so. :)