Yes, and to think it all started with Sailor Moon is pretty amazing. She had a terrible time in high school, so her applying herself to this endeavour of learning Japanese was pretty awesome, and I eventually talked her into going to college to study it formally, which she did for a year, with her wondering all along what she would do with it (she aced the year, and I always remember her final mark of 98.6 because it is human temperature in Fahrenheit LOL) ... but she was getting to an age by then, well out of high school, that she wanted to be employed (a good thing LOL) and knew she did not have a lot of schooling years left in her (haha). She was looking at the possibility of working in a medical office (I didn't think she would like that, but what do I know?), and then she was hired at a veterinarian hospital, with zero training or formal education for it, which is perhaps pretty rare. It was where her dad's family had always taken their pets for care, and she may have been hired on the strength of her having volunteered once a week for three years at a cat sanctuary that housed about 800 or so rescued feral cats, where she provided care for cats with feline AIDS and/or leukemia. She has been at the animal hospital now for about ten years, which is another miracle, because she has physical issues that, honestly, after she described her very first day of work to me, I wondered, how in the world is she going to do this??? But she has persevered. Lots of kids say they love animals and and would like to work with them and one of the first things I ever wanted to be "when I grew up" was a veterinarian, but few actually end up doing it. She has three cats and two dogs and takes incredibly good care of them. Any who, yes, mochi is made with rice flour... The Chinese mochi balls covered with sesame are sometimes a bit greasy, but I really like the red bean ones, and my daughter had little mochis with ice cream in them at Christmas time! They were pretty tasty, too...
