By Shunichi Mima | Reporter
We held a rice cake pounding event on Saturday, December 13, 2025.
The rice cake pounding event is one of Japan's traditional end-of-year events. While opportunities to experience it have become less common recently, our center holds one every year in mid-December to deepen our connections with the local community and raise awareness of our child welfare services.
This year, we invited two Sumo wrestlers from the Tamanoi stable, located in Adachi Ward, where our center is located, to demonstrate their powerful rice cake pounding skills. Over 100 people gathered from the neighborhood to watch.
Many families attended the event, and even young children diligently participated in the pounding alongside the wrestlers and staff.
The wrestlers' powerfully pounded rice cakes were incredibly smooth. Volunteers and our staff tore them into pieces, rolled them into balls, and coated them with three flavors: red bean paste, kinako (roasted soybean flour), and ground sesame. They served the rice cakes to visitors along with warm miso soup, which was a huge hit!!
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser