The first time I had mochi, I worried that somebody was going to get seriously injured. I was living in a rural part of Japan at the time and had driven to a small town where I gave weekly English lessons to a jolly, aging physician. On my way to the lesson, I stumbled into the small town's seasonal Shinto festival. The scene was full of white streamers, food booths, and men in religious robes cheerfully parading an enormous carved-wood phallus down the street.

Pairs of men in 19th-century clothes were in the street pounding rice flour—one man would crouch beside a barrel-sized wood mortar, kneading the dough and yanking his hands away moments before the other man slammed the dough with a wooden sledgehammer. They worked fast and rhythmically (knead, pound!, knead, pound!); any blip in their beat would've turned the kneader's hands into meatballs.

The result of this kneading and pounding (and steaming and filling with red bean paste) is mochi, a tiny cloud of ricey delight. The Japanese word for cooked rice is gohan, which literally translates to "honorable food," and mochi is an honorable sweet. When made properly, it is neither cloying nor flashy but has an elegant, grainy sweetness—it goes excellently with green tea, especially the delicately bitter matcha tea used in Japanese tea ceremonies.

While living in Japan, I learned that people there don't look for a man in the moon—they look for a rabbit pounding mochi with a wooden sledgehammer. In Japan, the story goes that the rabbit got his image on the moon for throwing himself into a fire for a saint who wanted something to eat. Western man-in-the-moon myths, from the early Christians to the Haida Nation, say the man got stuck there for stealing or sinning or doing something wrong. I'll take a noble rabbit over a selfish man any day.

Art Oki is a retired city finance accountant and one of two people in Seattle to make and sell his own mochi, at Umai Do (at South Jackson Street and 18th Avenue). The other, Chef Tokara-san at Tokara on Phinney Ridge, makes high-end mochi and is only open once a month. Oki makes mochi for the people.