May 5th is a day to celebrate! It is a Japanese national holiday, Children's Day (こどもの日 Kodomo no hi).
"WE", the parents, are supposed to dedicate our time totally to our children on this day!!! (Yet, I want to say, everyday is children's day to my children though....)
I beg your pardon, actually my above statement is not 100% correct.
The significance of Children’s Day is to pray for the boys' good health. This goes in tandem with March’s Girl's day celebration （雛祭り Hinamatsuri) which is a celebration of girls.
On this day, we eat Kashiwamochi (柏餅） which is a pounded glutinous rice cake stuffed with red bean filling wrapped in the leaf of a Japanese oak (柏の木 Kashiwa no ki).
As the leaves of these trees don’t lose their leaves until fresh leaves appear, meaning continuation of generations to generations (子孫繁盛 in Japanese).
In Japanese, they say, "「子供が産まれるまで親は死なない」=「家系が途絶えない」", parents will not die until a child is born, meaning the continuation of family name will never cease.
I bought 2 Kashiwamochi (柏餅） yesterday. One was filled with red bean paste and the other was filled with miso added sweetened white bean paste (味噌餡 Misoan). We ate them yesterday and I preferred the white filling over the red.
This rice cake reminded me of the Cantonese version of something similar. We call them "tea cake" （茶果) which is also a pounded rice cake wrapped in a leaf and the filling is contained of crushed peanuts, shredded coconuts, sesame and sugar. Oh YUM!!!!!
What leaf did they use???
I have no idea but it was a specialty of my grandma's hometown Tung Goon （東莞).
Perhaps I should try to reproduce it and use Japanese Oak leaves to warp it. I should ask my relatives during my next HK visit what leaves they used to wrap up the "tea cake".
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