We don’t always acknowledge Japanese holidays, but sometimes we do. This year for Children’s Day, formerly known as Boys’ Day, we ate kashiwa mochi, which is a thing to do on Children’s Day. The holiday is better known in this country for its carp streamers, but we don’t happen to have any of those. (Oddly enough, my mother had three that used to hang in the garage. I don’t know what became of them.)

Kashiwa mochi are rice cakes filled with red bean jam and wrapped in oak leaves. The ones we ate came in the package to the right. The small kanji characters say Sakuraya, the brand name, while the larger hiragana characters say kashiwa mochi.

You’d think it’s a product of Japan, but no. It’s domestic, possibly made by a bakery called Sakuraya in Gardena, Calif., and distributed by the Japanese Confection Inc. of College Point, NY. The package, and the Internet, isn’t clear on those points.

The red bean jam is mildly sweet, as red bean jam usually is, but the mochi rice cakes weren’t as sticky as I’m used to eating around the New Year.

Though not that sweet, curiously enough the first ingredient listed for the confection is sugar, followed by rice flour, red bean, sweet rice flour and potato starch.

As befitting its sugar content, it’s almost all carbohydrate, with no fat of any kind and only a touch of protein. No sodium, either.

Toward the end of ingredient list is “salted kashiwa leaf,” that is, the oak leaf. Not edible, but nice to look at. It also wraps the mochi, giving you something to hold it with.