Homemade mochi

My host grandparents are pretty awesome. They live on the other side of town. They have a really big garden -or a really small farm, whichever you want to call it- where they grow vegetables. Because of that, my family gets to eat fresh watermelon, cucumbers, figs and melons every day. I believe they also sell some of the produce at a roadside stand. This evening we went to the grandparents' house for dinner. The grandmother was cooking up some fresh mochi in a mochi-making machine.
If you don't know what mochi is, or think it's a kind of ice cream, let me explain. Mochi is the gooey outer coating you find on mochi ice cream. It's basically white rice cooked until it's soft, then ground up and steamed into an elastic white dough. I've had it before from Japanese grocery stores, but it was soooo much better fresh. We ate it with azuki beans, soy sauce,peanut powder stuff, or ground daikon radish on top. As the grandmother was making mochi, I saw her chopping up a very, very, purple root.
Me: Wow, that is definitely purple.
Grandma: This is a sweet potato.
Me: Really?
Grandma: Yes! Do you have sweet potatoes in America?
Me: Yes, but not that color.
Grandma: Sou desu neeee. (can't be translated)
She kept asking me a lot of funny questions like that, whenever different topics came up. "Do you have cucumbers in America?" "Do you have convenience stores in America?" "Do you have Saran Wrap in America?" Anyway, she took the purple potato and mixed it into the next batch of mochi, so the mochi turned a beautiful shade of purple. And you know how much I love purple.
After dinner the grandma took me on a walk around the neighborhood and showed me the local buildings. The grandfather also taught me how to play some board games. And they kept trying to get me to eat more food, which is exactly what my American grandparents do. "Eat, eat, there's plenty of food! Are you sure you're full? There's more food you know." Maybe someday when I'm a grandparent I'll understand this.
Before I left the grandmother gave me some little hashi oke, chopstick rests, made of Italian glass. I would like to give them a present as well, but none of the souvenirs I brought from America are nice enough. I think I'll draw them a picture.
Today, as usual, was extremely hot. Our house has no air conditioning, so I'm getting used to feeling sweaty all the time. So I was sitting there, feeling sweaty and fanning myself with a paper fan when all of a sudden it started to rain outside. Within about a minute, BOOM, it was furiously pouring outside, with thunder to boot. It was crazy raining. Looking out my window I saw a few pitiful souls who had been caught walking or biking. About five minutes later all the rain went away, and left the evening cool and dry. So I am in a very good mood this evening.

Thanks everyone for reading my "bloggings of Japan" and leaving nice comments.