Not glutinous rice. Ordinary table rice, cooked firm, is what goes into this, which is the first thing that separates it from every other mochi in the country.

The name records the method. Up in the working huts in the mountains, the rice was put on a wooden board and beaten into a paste with the back of an axe head or whatever else was to hand. Ita-dai, board-stand, and mochi.

It belongs to the western part of Tochigi, around the old Kuriyama village in Nikko. Because it is not made from glutinous rice it is less sticky than proper mochi, and it stays smooth and does not harden as the hours pass, which matters if you are carrying it somewhere.

It is rolled into flat discs and grilled, and then eaten with sweet miso, or with a miso sauce made from egoma seed that people here call june, or with adzuki paste, or with crushed soybean zunda. Every household seems to have its own preference. Sometimes it goes into a soup made with stock from a char somebody caught. It began as food for the mountain god's festival held at the hut, and as the thing a man carried back down to his family when the work was finished. Not going hard on the walk mattered.