The Whole Erk Catalogue Tales of a Geek Abroad

On the first day of 2008, we woke up very tired at Maria's, at around 8 am - we'd had about 5 hours of sleep. After a delicious pancake breakfast that nobody was quite awake enough to appreciate, we went to Ogawara by bus - a beautiful ride in the snow - to visit one of Maria's teachers for brunch.

The Oshogatsu traditional food is mochi, a pounded rice cake that is extremely heavy and chewy. Oshogatsu mochi are made from hard, dried rice cakes that are grilled until brown and puffy and put in something to rehydrate them, ideally a soup or sweet bean paste. Reading about this made it sound less appetising than it really is: the real thing is very delicious! Traditionally, during Oshogatsu, families will have a large mochi brunch and then not eat again until dinner. They don't really have a choice, since the mochi lunch is incredibly heavy and stick-to-your-ribsy.

[snip: I started writing this page but never finished. Resuming here!]

Later in the new year, we had a chance to go to Saito's and have similar traditional food... the main bonus to Saito's is that it was homemade, right down to the mochi! They have a mochi making machine! I want one for back home. We also had some of Mrs. Saito's increasingly famous pickles, and some kind of squid/seaweed salad that I thought was OK, but Jen quite liked. It was a lot of fun! Saito showed us his family shrine, decked out for Oshogatsu, and explained some of the traditions. Then we played with his granddaughter for a while, and left when she had to go for her nap.

This weekend, I took Jen for the experience that is Hadakamairi, the naked pilgrimage. More about that in a new post.