The Asia Trip: Kyoto Mochi Shop

Quite the morning crowd, no? They're all waiting to buy different types of mochi, a Japanese dessert made with glutenous rice pounded into paste and formed into a shape, usually a ball with different sweet fillings, usually some type of bean, especially red bean.

This was a mochi shop we came across while in Kyoto, a city which sports more older style (like different-era old) architecture than Tokyo which tends to have more modern Japanese houses and buildings. This particular shop had a lot of workers in the back busily making mochi.

All these trays were filled with mochi. It has a nice, old school, non-industrial feel to it, no?

We tried one of these which, if I remember correctly, had whole red beans embedded in them. It was pretty good and not too sweet. All mochi kind of taste the same flavor- and texture-wise to me. Well, unless they are too dry, because then, they're just kinda gross because they start to harden.

There's are mochi shops here in the States as well, mostly in Japanese enclaves like Little Tokyo, but the business is nowhere near as brisk as this shop in Japan.