Kagami mochi（Japanese New Year decoration）| How to decorate it

Kinako

3 years ago

Happy New Year!
Today I’m going to talk about “Kagami mochi”.

Have you heard about it?
If you know about Kagamimochi, do you know how to decorate it?

Kagami mochi is a Japanese New Year decoration

Kagami mochi is a Japanese traditional New Year decoration.
It’s made of two different sizes of rice cakes.
Usually, a smaller rice cake is on the bigger one.
And on top of the two rice cakes, there is citrus called “Dai dai”.

We enjoy this decoration “Kagami mochi” until the day of “Kagami-biraki”.
Kagami-biraki is usually January 11th.
(In Kansai area, Kagami-biraki is January 15th or 20th.)

Kinako

Depends on the place!

When I was a kid, my grandparents used to prepare a homemade Kagami mochi, but lately, some people use a non-eatable Kagami mochi which is commercially available.

And of course! I also have a non-eatable Kagami mochi.

How to decorate Kagami mochi

This is our non-eatable Kagami mochi.
I will explain about Kagami mochi using my non-eatable one!

This is how we decorate Kagami mochi.
Lately, people start decorating Kagami mochi in various modern ways, but this is the traditional way.

For the traditional way, you need “Sambo” and “Shihobeni” and so on.

Now I’m going to explain each name.

Sambo（さんぼう）

We call the stand to put Kagamimochi ”Sambo（さんぼう/三方）”.
This is also called “Sampo”.

You can use this to put “Tsukimi dango”, too.

三方三宝【吉野桧三方 8寸】幅24.7cm 奥行24.7cm 高さ18.2cm安価にお使い頂ける吉野桧製三方
価格：2900円（税込、送料別) (2022/1/7時点)

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Daidai（だいだい）

Dai dai is the name of the citrus.
We use this fruit Dai dai for other decoration “Shimenawa”, too.

This Dai dai is a fake one, but you can find a real Dai dai at supermarkets around this season as well.