reprinted from:

December 2020 – January 2021
Volume 75
Number 11

For this year, MBT Mochi-Tsuki canceled due to COVID

By Albert Sora
Mochi-Tsuki Chairperson

6 2014-7068If our temple’s Ginza Holiday Festival is the highlight of the year for me, Mochi-Tsuki is a strong second.

While Ginza is a cultural and fundraising event, Mochi-Tsuki is a pure cultural event. And for me, it brings back memories of many years ago, as a gathering day of my grandparents and uncles and aunts in far-off Kapaa town, Kauai, 26 miles away. Not all of them would appear, as I had 20 uncles and aunts.

Luckily, it never rained because our family’s mochi-tsuki always took place outdoors with steaming wood boxes over firewood. Only women made the mochi cakes on a temporary table of wooden planks in the exact way we do it today, and the men folks did the pounding in a stone usu.

Even the mochi gome was local and grown by Japanese farmers. These farmers also grew regular rice but mochi gome sold at a premium.

As kids, we really liked mochi as it had a distinct flavor unlike regular rice and a very different texture. Plus, it was made only once a year. (In later years, with the gatherings ended, mochi became commercialized and for sale in boxes holding cakes of different colors in a neat rectangular array.)

Today, mochi-tsuki is a very rare event in households. But here at the Midwest Buddhist Temple, it continues with vigor and in a volume that would serve a large family (our membership) and any passerby who may have dropped in. It’s a mix of old and new where old still employs steaming boxes, handmade cakes , mallet pounding—and new is represented by a clever machine with a propeller that magically forms a large mochi ball. But some say that it takes second to the pounding method because it contains no wood splinters.

Unfortunately, there will be no splinters and no festival this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. If it weren’t for COVID, we would have been gathering in the temple’s Social Hall on Dec. 9.

Instead, we thought we’d share some memories of our 2019 Mochi-Tsuki with some photos taken at last year’s festival.

Take my word, we’ll be back with a real Mochi-Tsuki in our Social Hall as soon as we are able. In the months before December 2021, check our digital monthly Bulletin or mbtchicago.org, for the exact date.

Would you like to make a donation for Mochi-Tsuki? Just go to our Donate Now Page. Thank you.

date posted: