Sweet rice, Japanese traditions and a community create mochi in Livingston

Sweet rice was the only ingredient needed to bring a family, childhood friends, a church and community together Friday.

Mochi, a traditional Japanese rice cake made from sweet rice, was being handmade during the annual Mochitsuki event at Livingston United Methodist Church.

After soaking sweet rice for a few days, said Sherman Kishi, an experienced mochi maker from Livingston, they steam the rice for about 40 minutes.

The sweet rice steams inside handmade cedar boxes, said Stu Nakashima, one of the individuals who brought the tradition back to Livingston about 40 years ago.

After the rice steams, said Kishi, 91, they grind it up and it’s ready to be pounded in bowls using long wooden mallets, making it a three-person job. One person turns the mochi over as two people take turns pounding the football-size loaf.

Pounding the mochi creates a “perfect texture,” Nakashima, 59, said. Most organizations who make mochi use a machine now, he said, making the texture not as good as the traditional prepping style.

“It’s kind of a cultural thing,” Nakashima said. “To recapture the old way of doing things.”

The pastor of the Livingston church, Hayes Kang, said people look forward to Mochitsuki every year because it’s a tradition that raises money for the church. He said he remembers eating mochi “all the time” in South Korea and never knew how it was made until he came to this church a few years ago.

Every year, community members order mochi that is sold for $5 a pound, and ahn mochi – mochi wrapped around adzuki bean and sugar filling – are $2 apiece. The proceeds go toward helping the church run, Kishi said, and this year about 500 pounds of mochi was made.

Surya Kishi Grover, 36, said when she started helping her family make mochi, she was as tall as the table. On Friday, she was separating the loafs of mochi into lemon-size balls.

A lot of the time, people like to eat mochi with a soy sauce and sugar mixture, Kishi Grover said, or pan fry it so it’s crunchyon the outside and soft on the inside. Eating mochi before the new year has been a tradition in her family, she said, and is supposed to “set you up good for the next year.”

Every New Year’s, Kishi Grover said, her family makes a soup with broth, vegetables and mochi.

“We eat it for an awesome 2017,” she said.

Kishi Grover said although the process of making mochi is labor-intensive, it’s a family event that she looks forward to and it’s “cool” to see the chain of events and how they go through a “whole life cycle.”

“It’s crazy you can make rice do this and someone figured out you can do this with rice,” Kishi Grover said.

Kirissa Hardwick, 26, has been a member of the Livingston church her whole life, and said she “encourages outsiders to come all the time.” She said people are at the church for most of the day preparing mochi and it’s a “sight to see.”

“It’s amazing to watch,” she said. “It brings everybody together and brings in the new year. It brings good luck to the new year.”

Tom Nakashima, 81, said it looks as though Mochitsuki will continue through the generations.

“It’s kind of a novelty,” he said. “It is a tradition to pass down to the next generations.”

This story was originally published December 30, 2016 at 6:17 PM with the headline "Sweet rice, Japanese traditions and a community create mochi in Livingston."