Iām Japanese-American, so mochi is a part of my personal history.
Real mochi, which starts as steamed short grain rice which is pounded in a huge mortar with a huge wooden hammer into a sticky resilient paste. Anything that claims to be mochi but comes by any other method is to sneer at.
This video is the preparation of matcha mochi for daifuku, a tender mochi dumpling filled with sweet red bean paste (anko) and rolled in roasted soybean flour (kinako).