Every year my town holds a festival with a vaguely Earth-Day-ish theme, with plants and homegrown vegetables for sale, reusable canvas bags kids can decorate, and an old-Japanese-lady version of a church rummage sale. I call it The Ogaki Hippie Festival. Last year's festival was packed with college-age kids in tie-dyed clothes, swaying to the tunes of the Phish-type band playing in the middle of the park, an unexpected sight in the midst of my rather staid, decidedly unhip(pie) town. I returned this year with my friend Liz in search of more cheap potted plants, yummy Indian food and dorodango.

Dorodango are perfectly smooth and shiny balls of mud, surprisingly beautiful objects originally made by Japanese children on the playground which have gained popularity recently both in Japan and the United States. The retired Japanese man I tutor remembers making them when he was small, and tells me he and his friends used to throw them when they were done, smashing to bits what must have taken hours to make. I'm sure there is a haiku about the fleeting nature of life to be found in there somewhere. Liz and I just wanted some super-shiny mud balls of our own.

Under an open tent, a glowering old man and a cheerful old lady presided over several tubs of dirt and a bucket of thick mud, each one surrounded by groups of small children rubbing, dusting and patting the growing balls of dirt in their hands. After snapping a few pictures, we asked the cheerful woman if we could try and she cheerfully urged two clumps of mud into our hands, demonstrating how to squeeeeeze the water out of the clump while shaping it into something roughly spherical. We squeezed and squeezed. "Dō desu ka?" we asked. "Chotto..." she said, and proceeded to squeeze for us. This exchange roughly translates to: "How's this?" "Um, yeah, no."

Step one: cut a hole in the box squeeze the mud.

After a proper squeezing by strong granny hands, our mud balls were dense and ready for the dirt. She led us over to a tub and we squatted next to a cool dad sporting a track jacket and hip glasses. He and the old woman attempted to pool their collective knowledge of English and instruct us on the next steps. From what we gathered, we were to sprinkle dirt on the balls and transfer them from hand to hand gently. Gently. We sprinkled. We transfered. The balls cracked. Suddenly, the glowering old man came barreling out of nowhere, yelling at us in Japanese and shaking his mane of gray hair vigorously. The cool dad translated for us: "Squeeze, no!"

But what to do about the cracks already present? Wasn't squeezing the only answer? Judging from the disapproving lines creasing the face of Dorodango-sensei, apparently not. Liz's ball was rescued by a friendly young Japanese mom, while I continued to gently sprinkle and transfer, sprinkle and transfer. The cracks began to slowly fade. Liz resumed shaping her now-crack-free ball and, after a period of contemplative sprinkling, yelped. Her fingernail had gouged a tiny divot in the ball. "It looks like it has a bellybutton," she said sadly. My own dorodango was still slightly ridged where the cracks had been. We forged ahead regardless.

Kids and cool dads.

Finally, the cheerful woman decided we were ready for the next step: sifting dirt through a screen, then dipping the palms of our hands into the resulting soft dust and rubbing it into the ball. It was at this point we realized we had unknowingly pledged the rest of our afternoon to the making of dorodango. We had already been at it for an hour and we noticed the people who had been at the stage we were currently at when we arrived were still there, dipping and rubbing, showing no sign of finishing. I overheard Dorodango-sensei telling someone the finished balls on display had taken three hours each to make. I reported this to Liz. We looked at each other, shrugged, and continued to rub.

Having reached this stage without being yelled at again, we were able to relax and observe what was going on around us. Liz was fascinated by a middle-aged man wearing headphones and assiduously working away at his dorodango with nary a smile or sparkle of joy in his eyes. Every time he had to take a break, he would hand the ball to his wife, who stood, patient and still, until he finished eating his snack and handed her the discarded wrapper. She put it in her purse.

I was most interested in watching Dorodango-sensei, the grumpy old man who obviously loved making these mud balls and seemed simultaneously pleased and pained by the kids' attempts at making their own. I saw him patiently help a toddler compress the initial clump of mud and start shaping her own tiny dorodango. I also saw him squeeze his eyes shut when one little girl dropped her ball and it smashed on the grass, like he could physically feel the mud shattering into a thousand irretrievable chunks at her feet. Most of the kids addressed him as "Sensei" and spoke in polite Japanese, except for one short-haired girl who looked to be about eight, who called him "Ojiisan" (Mr. Old Man) and spoke in blunt, casual Japanese. I admired her bravery. The man was intimidating.

Congratulations, little girl. You have made it onto my Kids I Want to Steal list.

After about an hour of polishing, we risked showing our dorodango to him. "Is this okay?" I asked in Japanese. "Mō ganbare," he said. Don't give up yet. But the festival was ending, the other booths packing up and getting ready to go. I noticed some people were putting dirt and the unfinished balls in plastic bags to be finished at home. I also noticed the booth was strictly BYOBag -- "We don't have bags!" Dorodango-sensei barked at a terrified child who dared ask for one. Luckily, we were in the Land of No Public Trash Bins, Not Even At Hippie Festivals, so both Liz and I had plastic bags floating around in our purses, which we dug out gingerly with dirt-encrusted hands.

Clutching our plastic bags of dirt and mud balls, we made for a nearby water fountain and attempted to rinse off and brush away the dust covering our hands, clothes, hair and shoes. Did I mention it's really windy in my town? And that some kids thought it funny to toss the dirt into the air? And that my once-black shoes had become a dull gray? Then we went back to my place to finish our dorodango in style, not crouched in the dirt and dust, but sitting on chairs on my balcony, sipping cold beers, polishing until the sun went down. Liz's ended up beautifully shiny, nearly as nice as the display dorodango we saw, but mine somehow ended up dull and slightly pitted from its journey in the plastic bag, which had been slightly wet. I was glad Dorodango-sensei wasn't there to see my pitiful first attempt.

This is not my beautiful dorodango.

We then contemplated throwing the balls over the edge of my balcony. Life is fleeting and so are dorodango -- but not when you spend three hours of your life making one. Maybe after I make the next one, I'll throw the first one against a wall somewhere.

(Updated to add: If you are interested in making your own dorodango but don't have a Dorodango-sensei nearby, My Little Mochi looked up some resources and CRAFT:03 has a how-to article. Perhaps you can convince a friend or relative to don a gray wig and yell at you sporadically for the full Japanese dorodango experience.)