'AIEA — The happy clatter of mochi-pounding mallets reverberated from the Aiea Hongwanji Mission yesterday morning as the community turned out for the traditional Japanese New Year's ceremony.

Amy Kanakuri, 14, a ninth-grader at Pearl City High School, was among the mighty mallet swingers. Even the unschooled observer could see that Amy, who has been taking part in the ritual since she was in the fifth grade, knew what she was about as she pounded the sweet paste used to bake rice cakes given to all comers.

In all, about 100 pounds of rice cakes were distributed yesterday.

Amy modestly described her mallet technique as "not a pro. Not good but not bad."

"I do it because it's all-around fun and it's a tradition," Amy said. "It's a tradition that reminds us of the way we used to do things that the modern day makes us forget.

"I am a Buddhist," she said, "and I'm happy that I am. It's like a family."

She looked around the temple filled with elders and children who were steaming the rice in beehive-shaped wooden ovens, grinding, pounding and cooking the paste into succulent cakes.

"Buddhism teaches that everyone has good, so everyone will be forgiven," she said.

Bennett Ito, 27, grew up attending the Hongwanji Mission and now lives in Torrance, Calif., but came home for the annual celebration.

"I come back every year for Christmas," said Ito, an aerospace engineer who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"It's a social tradition, to see the guys I grew up with and visit my parents. The temple was a big part of my life. It's a good community of people. There was lots of stability. I come back to recapture that moment, that social tradition."

Warren Tamamoto, wearing a purple T-shirt that showed a surfer with the message "Catch the Wave to World Peace," showed his 3-year-old grandson, Wyatt, the intricacies of mochi cake production.

Wyatt especially liked watching the rice paste come out of the grinder.

The grinders are a modern innovation, Tamamoto explained. Back in the day, all the work was done by the pounders, and it "took a lot of muscle power, but we don't need strong guys mashing it for hours nowadays," he said, pointing to the petite Amy swinging a mallet.

The Rev. Arthur Kaufmann took it all in with an expression of serenity.

Kaufmann, who was born in New York City and has lived in Hawai'i since 1993, said mochi-pounding "is an old Japanese country tradition" that isn't widely practiced these days. "We even have people come here from Japan to see it."

Kaufmann said he became a Buddhist after his experiences in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, prompting him to seek a more enlightened way of living.

So what had he learned?

Kaufmann smiled.

"The rice sticks together like a church," he said. "With any church, it is the people who make the church. We have good people, who are dedicated. We're very fortunate. We share with the community."

He then looked around at all the activity.

"Everything is impermanent," he said. "Nothing lasts forever. But truth is eternal."