{"id":157671,"date":"2011-12-27T19:49:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-27T19:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bdcc17f1-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e"},"modified":"2011-12-27T19:49:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-27T19:49:00","slug":"bdcc1802-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/bdcc1802-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e\/","title":{"rendered":"Mochitsuki Festival to ring in New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The non-profit group PDM Promoters, Inc. will be welcoming the New Year the Japanese way by hosting the Mochitsuki Festival at Paseo de Marianas in Garapan on Dec. 29.<\/p>\n<p>Sonia Siwa of PDM Promoters said this year marks the third celebration of the festival highlighted by the making of mochi, a Japanese rice cake made of glutinous rice, pounded into a paste and molded into different shapes. It is the traditional food for the Japanese New Year but is also eaten all year round.<\/p>\n<p>Thursday\u2019s festivities will kick off with presentations by the Saipan Awaodori Team and the Green Meadow School around 5:30pm.<\/p>\n<p>The dance performances will be followed by the mochi-pounding ceremony\u2014the highlight of the program.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere will be different flavors of mochi to be prepared during the event and PDM Promoters will be giving out free mochi samples,\u201d Siwa said. <\/p>\n<p>Unlike last year\u2019s celebration, Siwa said this year\u2019s festivities will not feature any game booths since PDM Promoters decided to have the Mochitsuki Festival coincide with the Thursday Street Market.<\/p>\n<p>For more information, call 234-6900. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The non-profit group PDM Promoters, Inc. will be welcoming the New Year the Japanese way by hosting the Mochitsuki Festival at Paseo de Marianas in Garapan on Dec. 29.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}