Not exactly rice cake … but nagi rice!!!
A rice cake, baked annually according to tradition, on Wednesday portended serious bad luck for 2009.
Mandala Mochi Uranai (Mandala rice cake fortune-telling) dates back to the Muromachi Period (1338-1573) and is held in this city’s Kodaki district each January.
Men born in years of the Ox, which is the Chinese zodiac sign for this year, made a round rice cake of about 50 centimeters in diameter. They then placed a sheet of paper on the rice cake and burned it.
After the flames subsided, the cake was flipped over and cracks on the bottom appeared.
If a large crack appears, the year’s luck is believed to be bad.
This year, extremely big cracks, of a size seen only once every 100 years, appeared in at least three places.
From Asahi
Wonder if 2009 is really going to be a bad year?
January 12, 2009 at 12:54 am
I do not believe in rice cakes (^_^)