Nathan Algren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shiroi_tiger) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomhigh2017-05-26 07:50 am
shiroi_tiger) wrote in fandomhigh2017-05-26 07:50 am
Entry tags:
Japanese Art, Friday, Period Two
Today, Algren, who was taking the fact that he'd been stained an alluring shade of paint-rain blue pretty well in stride, had his class meeting in the danger shop. Why? Because he wanted to do this the traditional way, even if it was next to impossible to find the proper equipment for it, and so he was willing to compromise. Just this once.
Even if he was mostly convinced the danger shop wanted nothing better than to humiliate him at every possible moment. For the time being it seemed to be cooperating, creating a spacious room for them with a large mortar on a stand, a mallet with a long handle propped up beside it.
"This week," he said to the class, crossing his arms and smiling, "we're making mochi, a small cake made out of rice, traditionally eaten around the New Year. Apparently these days, mochi is generally just made using the flour from glutinous rice, but traditionally, people would soak the rice overnight, steam it, and then place it in the usu - the large mortar- and beat the figurative tar out of it using the kine, or mallet. The usu and kine provided for you today aren't real, mostly because locating them on the island is... something of an errand. But the rice and the resulting mochi that you'll have when you're finished is absolutely real. So our task for today will be taken in two steps. We'll all take turns pulverizing the rice into mochi paste, and then, provided your arms still work after all of that, we'll be shaping the mochi however we please, generally into palm-sized pockets that can be shaped around a filling of your choice."
Maybe not what generally came to mind when people thought of art, no, but was that going to stop Algren? Absolutely not.
Even if he was mostly convinced the danger shop wanted nothing better than to humiliate him at every possible moment. For the time being it seemed to be cooperating, creating a spacious room for them with a large mortar on a stand, a mallet with a long handle propped up beside it.
"This week," he said to the class, crossing his arms and smiling, "we're making mochi, a small cake made out of rice, traditionally eaten around the New Year. Apparently these days, mochi is generally just made using the flour from glutinous rice, but traditionally, people would soak the rice overnight, steam it, and then place it in the usu - the large mortar- and beat the figurative tar out of it using the kine, or mallet. The usu and kine provided for you today aren't real, mostly because locating them on the island is... something of an errand. But the rice and the resulting mochi that you'll have when you're finished is absolutely real. So our task for today will be taken in two steps. We'll all take turns pulverizing the rice into mochi paste, and then, provided your arms still work after all of that, we'll be shaping the mochi however we please, generally into palm-sized pockets that can be shaped around a filling of your choice."
Maybe not what generally came to mind when people thought of art, no, but was that going to stop Algren? Absolutely not.