Random Picture #148

We're still in the throes of winter, or what passes for it in northern California, but I thought I'd share an image  from a summer festival in Japan. If you're feeling good and chilly already, this should send a shiver down your spine. During a tanabata festival, we caught a shot of this young fellow plunging his arm deep into a bath of ice to plumb for just the right beverage for a customer. When we saw him do this, we had two thoughts. First, this couldn't be comfortable. Second, despite the discomfort, in the high heat and humidity of an August in Tokyo, it may be preferable to consistently standing in the crowd and sweating. I imagine he had an impulse more than once to just plunge his face into the bath. I'm guessing, however, that customers would strongly object to his sweaty brow coming into contact with water that touched a can or bottle that touched their lips. Of course, they didn't seem to care or notice that his sweaty forearm was swirling around in there.

The tanabata festivals were scattered all over Japan at different times of the year. Our local one was actually quite late compared to most of the ones in other parts of Japan. That didn't generally make it any different than the other ones, it was just a lot more uncomfortable due to the increased temperatures.

Random Weekend Picture 20

As summer comes rolling in, festivals start making the rounds and that means food. If it can be crammed on a stick and cooked on a sheet of metal, you can generally find it on offer. Here, you see a young man sweating it out grilling sticks of beef at the Koenji Awaodori festival. It looks and smells good, but a closer look at the raw business shows just how bad it is for you:

Japanese people are always telling me that American food is just so much fattier than Japanese food, but this meat looks anything but lean. It smells good, but it looks like artery poison. Also, frankly, this stuff just sits out in the open in sweltering summer heat while hundreds of people mill around (talking, coughing, touching things they shouldn't), insects do their business, and hands have nowhere to be washed.

Random Weekend Picture 16

Describing mochi to people always feels inadequate when I do so in English. Calling it "rice cake" makes people visualize things like the Styrofoam health food discs that are sold to people trying to lose weight. Most mochi in Japan is processed in factories because making it is very labor intensive. Occasionally, people will get together and make it fresh for festivals. This picture was taken at one such festival. They're beating rice to a taffy-like consistency. This is the basis of all of the mochi snacks that I review, though obviously none of the mochi used in those foods is hand-made. My guess is that only premium mochi or that which is made for special occasions is hand-made.

One of my students told me her family buys fresh mochi (like that made by hand in the picture above) for their New Year's "kagami mochi" (traditional New Year's decoration). I asked her if it tasted better than the mass-produced stuff and she said she didn't like it. Of course, one of the reasons she wasn't keen on it was that it had the tendency to crack and get moldy as it sat around as a decoration until New Year's day. She said her mother had to cut out the moldy bits before they could eat it. It didn't really inspire me to seek out fresh mochi for my future kagami mochi needs.