英会話　英語　アミック Mochi, Daifuku or Dango?

I had tried Mochi long before coming to Japan. First time I tried Mochi was in Bangkok in 2010. It was love at first sight or more like love at first taste. I remember how excited I was when trying to describe that amazing sweet to my sister.

“It’s round and soft and chewy! Smells like rice! There are so many flavors and fillings! It is so  cool.”

Since that day, I have been looking for “mochi” wherever I have travelled and I have been amazingly surprised by the diversity that different shops offer. So all through those years I had assumed that any round and chewy rice ball sweet was called mochi! And then I arrived in Japan and I went to the supermarket to try my first real Japanese mochi. I was standing there in awe for minutes and minutes, staring at all those rice balls in different colors and sizes. “Oops! Are these all mochi?” I wondered. I picked 5 or 6 different types and went back home. They all tasted great and different. Using online translator, I realized not all of them were called mochi! “What does this mean?” So I did some research and suddenly I thought “eureka! Found it!” Not all of them are mochi. I had mochi, daifuku and dango. 

Mochi is made from glutinous rice. It is round, chewy and white and definitely not sweet. It meant that all those colorful and sweet “mochi” I had all those years ago were not mochi really. They were dango or daifuku which are mochi with additive colors and sweeteners.

mochi

Then I also realized that dango and mochi are almost the same. While mochi is made from rice, dango is made from mochiko. Wondering how I can tell the difference, I found out that dango is usually made into small balls on a stick.

dango

Then there is daifuku which can be in different colors and has fillings like anko or strawberries. Yes! This is it! This is the one I fell in love with all those years ago. I feel so happy to have cleared this one mystery; however, there is more to come.

daifuku

I think everybody around me already knows how much I love sweets. So I keep getting recommendations especially from my very nice Japanese friends here about what to try next. So the journey goes on!