The last weekend that we stayed in our LaTour Yoyogi Uehara apartment, Sumitomo threw a traditional Japanese New Year's Party, with Mochi making, dragon dancing, Japanese food and drink. It was a party for the whole building, and was a lot of fun, and interesting as well.
Mochi are traditional Japanese rice cakes, made out of glutinous rice, pounded into paste and molded into shape. In Japan, they commonly come in Green Tea flavored, filled with red bean paste. You can also find them stuffed with strawberries, and in Hawaii, with chocolate malt balls and mini-snickers- some are even frozen with ice cream inside!!They are delicious and addicting!
We all got a chance to pound the rice into Mochi, which was fun (being that Scott is so big, everyone was like "ooohhh" and they gave him this really heavy mallet and didn't want him to stop pounding the rice!
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| Maya and Ainsley pounding the rice to make Mochi |
After the Mochi making, we moved out to a Traditional Japanese New Year's dance, dragon and all!
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| Though not scary to us, it scared every kid in the building! |
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| Scott and I with the dragon dancer after..the sign says prosperity and health in the new year (or something like that!) |
