We made rice cakes / 餅をつきました！

【ENG】

Last December 30, we made rice cakes. The rice cakes are used for New Year's decorations and dishes. In Japan, there is a custom of making rice cakes at the end of the year and during the Girls' Festival season in March.

When I was a child, my grandparents and parents pounded rice using a mortar and pestle, but from some time ago, they started using a rice cake pounding machine. The entire process, from steaming the glutinous rice to making the mochi, is done by this machine. However, we had to take out the hot rice cakes from the kiln with my bare hands, which looked very hot... only my mother could do that.

Then we dusted the rice cakes with flour, stretched it out, and let them cool. That night my sister-in-law and I cut those rice cakes. We used a rice cake cutter to cut them. There were four or five of these board-shaped rice cakes, but we cut all of them into blocks. It was cold in the storage shed, and because the stand was halfway high and we were cutting in a mid-sitting position, my back was already aching and sore... At first we were cutting while making small talk, but gradually both of us became silent...lol

Too bad I didn't get a picture of us cutting the rice cakes because it was pretty frantic!




○●━━━━━━━━━━━・・・‥‥




【JPN】

12月30日、お餅をつきました。新年の鏡餅、お雑煮やお汁粉に使うお餅です。

子どもの頃は、臼と杵を使って祖父母や両親がついていましたが、いつの頃からか餅つき機でつくようになりました。もち米を蒸してつくところまで、この機械がやってくれるそうです！とはいえ、この窯からアツアツのお餅を取り出すところは素手でやらなければならず、とても熱そうでした・・・（母にしかできません）。

その後、餅とり粉をまぶしてお餅をのばし、冷まします。餅切機で切り餅を作る作業は、その夜私と義妹でやりました。この板状の餅が、4～5枚はあったと思います。物置小屋は寒いし、台の高さが中途半端で中腰の姿勢で切っていたため、もう腰が痛くて痛くて・・・最初は世間話などしながらカットしていましたが、徐々に2人とも無言に（笑）

かなり必死だったため、お餅をカットする写真が撮れなかったことは残念です。

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