Day 7-8 Hello Okinawa!
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Loading ...After 25 hours of a rather rough ferry boat ride, I arrived in the evening in the port of Naha. Naha is the capital of Okinawa prefecture. A friend of my friend came to get me with her 8 months old baby (crying), and we headed to have dinner at an Okinawan restaurant. Orion Beer is Okinawa’s staple, and that’s how they welcomed me and we became friends over Okinawan food.
Okinawa’s famous dish, goya champuru (stir-fried bitter melon), is delicious and Orion Beer goes down the throat at a good pace with this kind of dish! This dish also includes pork, tofu, and eggs in it.
After dinner, I slept like a dead in my new friend Hana-chan (Hanako’s nickname) family’s home in Ginowan, When I woke, she and her husband had made breakfast. Okinawa has many American military bases, and that culture can be seen in many aspects including food. Spam is one of those. I hadn’t been such a fan of this, but, when in Okinawa, do as Okinawans do.
I love home cooked meals. The love that goes into the food at home easily beats restaurant food.
So when I was loading my bike right before getting off the boat, the boat swayed really big and I hit my head twice on a metal bar. My forehead had a big bump, and I had to ice it. Don’t I look lovely.
Okinawa has so many taco rice places. Its volume was unbelievable, I could only eat a third of it. Under the lettuce is ground taco beef. Okinawa’s food portion is generally huge and pretty cheap.
They eat a lot of pork in Okinawa. Okinawa still uses completely different words for some things from the mainland Japan, and such words includes parts of pork meat as well.
This is Okinawa’s Kuruma-fu. I could not believe the size of this fu!!! Fu is much much much smaller in all other parts of Japan – like 2cm cube size. This kuruma-fu is gigantic!!! It’s kind of like bread, but you don’t eat it like this. It’s got this chiffon-cake-like consistency, super light and airy, and it’s used in soups and stir-fries. Because it’s so airy and spongy, it soaks up all the flavor that you give to it.
Saw some surfers on the way back from grocery shopping.
I helped in making dinner – this is called Shiri Shiri. You grate carrots on a tool like a cheese grater, and stir-fry them with onions with dashi.
Cooking with family and friends and enjoying it together afterward is such a rewarding and fun time. Going to restaurants is easy, but using the home kitchen totally rules.
About the Author: Sachi
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