I Tried the Hobby that Took Over Japan in 1999 (Hikaru Dorodango)
This is a really satisfying hobby / project you can pick up in a weekend and you don't need any special tools.
Dorodango (泥だんご Mud Dumpling) in Japanese are balls just made of dirt and water. It was a children's pastime in Japan but was fading away. In 1999 Professor Fumio Kayo of the Kyoto University of Education was observing a preschool and saw kids making them. One of the teachers then showed him how to make a shiny (Hikaru) one
He then developed his own repeatable method so that he could teach more kids how to do it and observe how they play and learn at different ages. NHK, Japan's Public Broadcasting Corporation did a piece on the phenomenon and the hobby took off
I really recommend you give it a try if you're bored one weekend, it's pretty crazy that you can turn dirt into something like this
Here's a great channel from someone that knows a lot more than me about how to make them if you're looking for more info
@DorodangoNoriko-u3x
0:00 You Can Polish Mud?
0:19 History of Dorodango
0:34 Preparing the Soil
1:06 Making the Core
2:34 Making it a Perfect Sphere
3:11 Layering and Polishing the Test Dorodango
4:42 Making the BIG One
5:51 The Unending Struggle
6:29 The Secret to A Perfect Polish
7:51 The Final Product
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