umegae mochi

It's a baked rice cake in Fukuoka, located in Kyushu, the south of Japan. Our neighbor has brought it as a souvenir. She is from Fukuoka, and so is my mother. So that, she brings this rice cake when she goes home. umegae mochi is famous to be sold in Dazaifu Tenmangu shrine. it has bean paste in it as an usual rice cake. it said that the mochi, "ume-ga-e mochi" derives from an old women baked the mochi sticked with ume-branch to solace the death of a person in the shrine in the old days. it will be tasty if you can bite the mochi just baked. it's the kinda cake you will say "one more!".