a Happy New Year!!
Looking forward to a year filled with new discoveries and challenges, and off course, a safe and healthy one.

We got too busy towards the year end and so I couldn’t do any new year preparation this year, but we at least were able to put up a KAGAMI MOCHI.

So what is a KAGAMI MOCHI?? KAGAMI MOCHI, literal meaning “mirror rice cake”, is something we put up for New Years as an offering to God. Since the ancient times, it was believed that God dwelled in a mirror and had been treated to be something sacred. Hence, KAGAMI MOCHI was given its name for its round shape resembling that of antient mirrors.

In Japan, it was believed that TOSHI GAMI (New Year God) visited us in the New Year. People offered KAGAMI MOCHI for the TOSHI GAMI to dwell in, and celebrated the New Year with God and wished for good luck for the coming year.

It is offered with a smaller MOCHI on top of a larger MOCHI, representing the “moon (yin) and the “sun (yang)”.

We are not to eat the KAGAMI MOCHI while the TOSHI GAMI SAMA dwells in it, and so we wait until the end of New Years. But the end of New Year differs depending on different regions, and so today, we generally eat the KAGAMI MOCHI on January 11th for superstitious reasons.

More stories on how we eat the KAGAMI MOCHI to come on January 11th!

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