The Year of Fun #2: Mochi Making

The Year of Fun… week one is down! So did I stick to my fun guns?? Well, yes… but let’s never call them ‘fun guns’ again. As you may remember, the first fun activity I picked from my jar of fun was ‘go to a Nomunication.’   Now, a ‘nomunication’ is basically an event that a local Japanese learning meetup group holds. The problem was… there was no nomunication this week! It normally involves drinking and talking, both in Japanese and English. My insecurities in my own noob status at Japanese has meant I’ve never attended one. Now I should have been less specific, because this particular event wasn’t on last week. Instead, I had the option to go to a Mochi-making event held by the same group. And I went!   Honestly I was not massively looking forward to it when the day came. I felt my standard fears around being in a big group of strangers - plus the possibility of having to speak Japanese which scared the crap out of me too. But I had to go: the Year of Fun would have been a bit of a flop if I couldn’t even make my first week’s event. It was… really nice. I felt comfortable in the group: this is undoubtedly a friendly bunch and I’m looking forward to dipping my toe in more of their meetups. I did my classic introvert thing: spent most of my time speaking to just one person, but she was lovely and we had a lot in common. And of course: the mochi!   Mochi is something I love anyway, but I have never made it before: and now I know it’s not that complicated, I have bought myself some mochi making flour my very own mochi rice cake things. More about mochi >> A fun part was shring tips on how to eat the mochi, and as someone who loves food and especially loves weird combinations of food, I very much appreciated one attendees tips for making a mochi cheese melt in the microwave - it was amazing. So, out of 10, I’d give this a 7: it wasn’t super duper fun but it was pleasant, a nice thing to do on a Sunday afternoon and it is likely to lead to a lot more fun: at least in terms of making mochi on a regular basis. Now: to reveal next week’s fun! BARISTA SKILLS TRAINING! Yikes! I'm not sure I can make this one happen by next week, but I can certainly investigate it. There are a few different coffee shops in Brighton that offer barista skills training, so I can enquire to see if they'll have this creative introvert messing around with their beans... Either way, I'll have some fun to report back this time next week!     Have you ever tried mochi? Have you made mochi? Any good recipes to share   Shownotes >>