Another New Year custom in Japan is creating rice cakes (餅, mochi).
Boiled sticky rice (餅米, mochigome) is put into a wooden shallow bucket-like container and patted with water by one person while another person hits it with a large wooden hammer. By mashing the rice, it gets sticky and forms a sticky white dumpling. This is made before New Year's Day and eaten during the beginning of January.
Because of mochi's extremely sticky texture, there are many deaths by choking on New Year in Japan, particularly in the elderly population. The death toll is reported in newspaper publications the day after New Year.
Sad but true and there have already been 13 cases of choking in Tokyo alone!!
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