The whole idea of this site is that we don't rank things we've never done. We go, we do them, and we tell you what it was actually like. So here are two things I'm doing in Tokyo right now — one I can already do (badly), one I'm only just starting. A hands-on mochi-pounding class, and the running habit I'm building toward a race next spring.
Making mochi from scratch
I booked a hands-on mochi-making course and pounded my own. To be clear up front: this isn't sponsored — I found it, booked it, and paid for it myself. If you want to do the same, hands-on mochitsuki (mochi-pounding) classes run all over Tokyo through the usual experience-booking sites and neighbourhood cultural centres — most are an hour to ninety minutes and land somewhere around ¥3,000–¥6,000 a head, usually with the mochi you make (and tea) included.
If you've only ever eaten mochi, the making of it is a genuine surprise, because it's less cooking than it is rhythm and a bit of controlled danger. The parts that stuck with me:
- It starts as rice, not dough. Glutinous rice (mochigome) is steamed until soft — nothing like the smooth white blocks you know yet.
- Then the pounding. The steamed rice goes into an usu (a heavy stone or wood mortar) and gets struck, over and over, with a kine — a big wooden mallet. Traditionally it's a two-person job: one person pounds, the other reaches in between strikes to fold and wet the mass by hand. The timing is the whole skill — and, the first time, genuinely a little nerve-wracking, because one of you is swinging a mallet into the exact spot the other's hand just left.
- The transformation is the payoff. Under the pounding the distinct grains disappear and it becomes one smooth, absurdly elastic, stretchy mass. Watching rice turn into that by hand is the part you don't get from eating it.
- Then you shape and eat it warm. Pull off pieces, round them while they're still soft, and eat immediately — dusted in kinako (toasted soybean flour), with anko (sweet red bean), or the plain soy-and-sugar version. Fresh mochi warm off the usu is a different food from the packaged kind.
My first few swings landed where the rice wasn't — the folder pulled their hand back just in time, which is exactly why that call-and-response timing exists — but by the end we'd found a rhythm, and the warm first bite made the near-misses worth it: fresh mochi is softer, stretchier and far milder than anything off a shelf, barely sweet on its own until the kinako lands.
Worth it? Yes-if. If you'd rather do a thing than watch it and don't mind a class that's half cooking, half coordination, it's a great couple of hours — especially with kids or a group, where the two-person rhythm is most of the fun. If you only really want to eat good mochi, skip the class and go buy some fresh.
What's next: learning to run
Here's the honest one. I'm at the very start of this.
I've given myself a goal to train toward: the **Nakano Running Festa, which next runs in March 2027*. And "training" is generous — right now I'm just beginning to run*, from close to zero, with that date as the finish line I'm aiming at. The hope is to have it genuinely mastered — or at least respectable — by the time it comes around. Today it is early, un-glamorous, and mostly humbling.
That's on purpose, and it's the doer ethos in real time: pick a thing, start before you're ready, and report back honestly as it goes — the early slog included. Consider this the first checkpoint. I'll update as the training (and the inevitable stumbles) unfold between now and next March.
Why running, and why this one? Partly because it's the opposite of the mochi — nothing about it is quick — and partly because a race with a date on the calendar is the only way I reliably stick to anything. Nakano's a flat, friendly local event rather than a marathon, which felt like the honest place to start rather than pretending I'm chasing a time.
The takeaway
Two ends of the doing spectrum: mochi you can pull off in a single warm, sticky afternoon, and running you only earn over months. Both beat watching from the sidelines — which is the only real rule this site has.
---
Disclosure: The mochi class was one I found, booked, and paid for myself — not sponsored, no affiliate relationship. The Nakano Running Festa link is provided for readers; I have no connection to the event beyond signing myself up to train for it.