KEIKO KOMA net

3 Feb. 2010

An aroma of dream

I was driving to Kyoto and I looked up to see a dark blue night sky wide open before my eyes that made me excited anticipating a dramatic event waiting for me. First, I would be challenged making special sweet beans, Zenzai, that would invite good luck. I sensed these days a smell and vapor of boiled beans. It was a pair of rice cakes with a lucky Koguryo’s Daifuku that I had started making all of a sudden several years ago. One day in the morning, I woke up to find myself surrounded by a smell of Daifuku and an exquisite aroma that were identical to what my mother used to make by hand for me when she was still alive. Spontaneously I looked for my mother and went to the kitchen in vain. Moreover I acknowledged that this house was built after the death of my mother so there was no single trace of her. In any case, the aroma of Daifuku stayed all day long and I could not help starting to make one by myself though I did not know how to make it. I was very excited and joyfully started working with rice, shaped it to Daifuku with sweet beans and covered it carefully with white rice in my hand. The smell was the only clue to make it and little by little I recalled how I had helped my mother making it in my childhood. An image of my mother was revived in what I called my light-scape. There I imitated what my mother was doing. Finally a wonderful Daifuku was born with which I wished to invite good luck. To my surprise, each Daifuku delivered me a message so I wrote it down on a traditional Japanese paper to come with Daifuku. The kitchen was filled with beautiful aroma and breeze clad in a color of happiness. To my joy, people who took one of them were also greatly impressed with my Daifuku with a message. Some shed tears and others jumped up out of joy. They seemed to have realized in a dramatic moment how I came to make it. I was extremely happy as I could share a dream of my childhood with many people even through a kind of food. Now I was being challenged to make Zenzai using a big pot hand made by Mr. Idaki Shin, I was excited to manifest another wonderful dream.