Spring Comes With Beautiful Sweets

Japanese celebrates the coming of spring with beautiful sweets called mochi (rice cakes).   Mochi is literally pounded glutinous rice.    Traditionally at the end of the year glutinous rice is pounded for the special rice cakes known as mochi.   The pounding of rice has also become a festival itself called mochitsuki.    Mochi is widely used not only in New Years celebration but also in the beginning of a new season.

In spring time we have special traditions to eat sakura mochi, uguisu mochi and yomogi mochi. These mochi are usually hand made with sweet red beans or white beans fillings inside.  

Sakura mochi is usually pink decorated with salted/pickled sakura blossom and wrapped in edible pickled sakura leaves.   Uguisu mochi is green to portray "uguisu" (a Japanese warbler), here well known as a light green color wild bird of spring.  It can sing beautifully and its appearance is closely associated with the plum blossom ("ume ni uguisu").   Yomogi is herbal leaves derived from plants which is similar to Chrysanthemum.  Yomogi is widely used in Japan to produce natural "green" coloring for mochi and other traditional sweets.

My favorite Spring time activities is to walk in the park and have a little picnic, drinking hot tea and eating sakura mochi.    Major parks in Tokyo provides facilities for visitors to enjoy Japanese green tea with traditional Japanese sweets while watching plum blossoms in the early spring and sakura blossom in mid spring.