もち - 日本の文化を英語で説明しましょう。

Rice cakes (mochi)

If you look up mochi in an English-English dictionary, you may find an entry that says something like the following: a short-grained, sweet, glutinous rice with a high starch content, used in Japanese cooking. This means that mochi is a kind of rice.

In Japanese, when we say mochi, we are referring to rice cakes made of glutinous rice. (Glutinous means sticky.) First the rice is cooked. Then, it is pounded into paste. Lastly, it is molded into shape.

Mochi can be pounded by hand with mallets, made in an automatic mochi machine, or even in a bread maker. We imagine that few people would use a bread maker to make mochi as it just sounds too strange.

Mochi is eaten all year round, but it is also traditional New Year’s food. It is very sticky and can stick in the throat. Every year some elderly people die at New Year’s from eating mochi.

These Japanese rice cakes are completely different from the rice cakes commonly sold throughout the USA. The rice cakes in the picture below are puffed rice cakes. These are sold as a health food in North America and other Western countries. They are very popular with dieters.

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