Tokyo: Mochi Pounding and Tea Ceremony in Shimokitazawa Mochi Pounding Experience

Learn how to make mochi and enjoy a traditional tea ceremony in Tokyo's Shimokitazawa neighborhood. Pound rice with a mallet, shape it into a sweet, and enjoy it with matcha tea.
Begin your experience by pounding mochi with a wooden mallet and a stone mortar. Take turns with your group, calling "Yoisho!" together to synchronize the person swinging with the person reaching in between strikes to turn the rice with wet hands.

For the first few strikes, you can still see individual grains. After ten or twenty, the resistance changes: heavier, stickier, the mallet starting to be pulled in. Nobody notices that shift as clearly as the person holding the handle.

Next, shape the pounded rice into something that can be served at a tea gathering. A tea sweet cannot be too large. There is a size that can be cut with a kuromoji pick and lifted to the mouth comfortably while seated. Learn how the shape follows the season.

Then, step into a tatami room and take your seat. Learn the reason behind each movement, such as why the tatami border isn't stepped on, how you enter low, and why the bowl is turned before drinking.

Your host ladles the water, works the bamboo whisk, and prepares the tea close enough for you to hear it. Then the sweet you pounded is brought in. Eat it first, then take the tea. Sweetness, then bitterness. The entire existence of the tea sweet is explained by that order — and you feel it rather than being told it.

At the end, prepare a bowl yourself. Learn how to hold the whisk, how fast to move it, and how the foam forms. Making a good bowl is harder than it looks, and more interesting than it sounds. Drink what you make. Any remaining mochi can also be enjoyed the familiar ways: kinako, anko, nori with soy sauce.

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