Mochi

An evangelist meeting? Day of the dead? Not at all. On the day when a North Korean missile was fired over the north of Japan, a small town in Aichi had a Mochi catching festival..

Mochi is cooked rice beaten into a thick paste and formed into small cakes. Today's festival was held at a local shrine where local people gathered to catch mochi cakes which were thrown from a raised stage.

I went to the Honen Festival a few years ago and as rock hard mochi rained down from the skies, someone grabbed my shell toe trainers thinking they were mochi and nearly sent me flying. These events get a little hectic.

As the crowd dispersed and the last mochi bagged, we noticed that one bag of mochi was stuck in a tree. Some very energetic throwing. It was a vary happy young farmer's son who caught them when they were eventually prised free.