Every year the community is treated to a taste of Makiki Christian Church’s homemade Japanese foods, local favorites like sushi, udon with shrimp tempura, and freshly pounded mochi at the Festival of Thanksgiving.

“We’re famous for our food,” says coordinator Susan Nakaishi. “We do enjoy our food and have been blessed to have many good cooks. … We recognize that some of the best conversations happen around a meal.”

The festival — expressing gratitude to the community it has served for 114 years — is held well before the Thanksgiving holiday; this year’s event was Oct. 6. For 10 years the four-hour event has easily drawn up to 1,500 people, and lines have formed outside the gates an hour before the 9 a.m. opening, Nakaishi said.

MAKIKI CHRISTIAN was founded to help Japanese immigrants settle in Hawaii. The festival was launched decades ago as a typical church bazaar not nearly as elaborate as it is today.

Longtime church members — many in their 70s — spend hours making standards like nishime, ohagi (mochi rice balls covered with red bean paste), and sekihan (red rice with azuki beans). Many of the recipes have been passed down for generations.

Top sellers include Etsuko Craven’s teriyaki barbecue squid (ikayaki), and udon noodles topped with just-fried shrimp tempura, by chef Chokatsu Tamayose of Sunrise Restaurant in Kapahulu. His wife, Tomoko, refers to the dish as a “gift from the gods.”

Reflecting Hawaii’s myriad cultures, also on the menu this year were Korean kim chee, Chinese ginger chicken, Hawaiian poke and a scrumptious array of western-style desserts and snacks.

EILEEN CLARKE, who volunteers to make sushi every year, said it’s exhausting to set up the entire festival, but the aging church members are a strong group when they rally together, “and in the end, it is fun.”

Church members also provide dinners for local homeless shelters and support a feeding station in far-away Malawi, Africa, Nakaishi added.

Makiki church was known as “the eating-est church” within the United Church of Christ denomination as far back as the late 1980s, she said. But former pastor Ted Ogoshi wanted to build onto their reputation, saying, “I’d like Makiki to be known as the feeding-est church.”

>> Takoyaki: For the first time this year, the church’s Japanese-speaking Nihongo contingent of more recent immigrants grilled octopus balls, which are like “the Spam musubi of Osaka,” Nakaishi said. The congregation’s new pastor, Yoshitaka Fujinami, said takoyaki is the most popular snack in his hometown of Osaka, and “it’s fun to make.”

The soupy batter contains bits of tempura flakes, green onions and pickled ginger, encasing the grand prize — a chunk of octopus. Cooking was done on six special gas grills, each with 20 rounded cups. But organizer Mariko Mitamura said the grills have no temperature gauges so it takes a practiced eye to judge when the takoyaki is done. Garnished with tonkatsu sauce mixed with mayonnaise, and sprinkled with nori flakes, they went fast at $5 for six pieces.

Fujinami, who has been making the treat for special occasions since he was a kid, used two thin wooden barbecue skewers to “flip” the dough lightly, rotating each ball until the batter developed a fried crust after 10 minutes. You’d think using tiny spoons would be easier, especially with all the bits of filling that need to be repeatedly nudged back into the thickening batter, but they would break up the dough and scratch the Teflon molds, he said. Most used a skewer in each hand, but Yoko Hirai was able to wield hers like chopsticks.

>> Mochi: The Kumagai family made mochi on demand to supply the steady stream of customers waiting and watching them pound steamed rice into a sweet, sticky paste. It took about 15 minutes, and then the paste was quickly formed into patties. Some were filled with sweetened azuki beans, which sold for $3 for two large pieces, still warm when you bit into them.

Starting with 75 pounds of rice, Megumi Kumagai and her family pounded out 10 batches of mochi in their old “usu,” a traditional stone mortar.

“I used to pound mochi in Japan at my grandma’s house. Now everybody uses a machine.”

Daughter Hikaru Kumagai, 26, said mochi made the old-fashioned way tastes a lot better, as the pounding incorporates more air into the paste, making it easier to chew.

She said her mom doesn’t really measure the sugar or water added to the rice, “she just wings it and it comes out.” The harder part is making the anko (bean filling) — the stirring and mashing take a good 90 minutes.

>> Inari and maki sushi: Sisters Eileen Clarke, Linda Oka and Sandy Ishihara-Shibata made two kinds of sushi with the help of brother Russell Ishihara.

Their parents owned the small Sushi Center deli on Kalakaua Avenue in the 1960s, and “we grew up making sushi,” Clarke said.

The flavor balance for the rice is critical.

“We do have a recipe and measurements, but in the end, it really is the taste,” Clarke said. “It can’t have too much salt, too much sugar or too much vinegar.”

Gene Kaneshiro, whose family owned the famous Columbia Inn on Kapiolani Boulevard, is an official taste tester, along with the sisters, and is in charge of the men who cook the rice at 2 a.m. and mix in the sauce on festival day.

The inari (cone) sushi were filled with a blend of rice, finely chopped fried egg, carrots, green beans and mushrooms.

Ishihara-Shibata (also director of the preschool) said a dozen volunteers have learned to assemble the sushi “by the feel and look” over many years.