lingqi's Journal: August 25th, 2004

August 25th, 2004 (2:38am)

-- continues... --

I should make mention that we paid a visit to a restaurant in Okinawa, one of the recommended ones on our guide book. Something about travelling makes you learn valuable lessons about life. One such thing you learn is that your chance of finding a good restaurant based on the recommendation of a beautiful picture of a bowl of food is not always necessarily any better than if you simply stumbled on the restaurants. In fact, I think if I tallied up all the "coincidentally good" restaurants and the "recommended in a guide book but can be rated at most 'so so'," I have had better chances finding interesting food just by walking around with my eyes peeled.

In any case, this restaurant we went to was one of these reinforcing experiences. Although the picture of the "butter fried fish" was absolutely gorgeous and the price quite good, we got there to find that the taste is actually somewhat subpar. The restaurant was supposed to be like a fish market that sells fresh fish, but it combined the worst of both qualities: the fish were no fresher than any other place we went to, and the restaurant was filled with the distinct smell of fisheries. The place itself was also quite aescetic, like a plain cafeteria. The food that eventually was served up set the final nail in the coffin - while the picture certainly did the food justice, it was bland and oily; no wonder the guide book focused on the price and location (it was just a little ways from the beach)!

The trip was not, however, a loss. Connected to the restaurant in the same complex was some very interesting stores, the largest being a gift-shop and a connected farmer's market sort of small place.

Though I have called it a gift shop, it was really a Okinawa Omiyage (specialties) shop, and a big one it was. Food wise Okinawa is famous for three things, Goya (bitter melon), aka-imo (red fleshed yam), and pineapples. The store features many types of confections and cookies in each or a combination of these flavors. I spent a good 6,000 yen buying these stuff to bring back to Tokyo, and this was the beginning of my journey to Living Poorly (tm), which is continuing even today (For example, I subsisted on about 580 yen for the past two weeks).

The interesting part was, though, the farmers' produce section. The first that catches your eye when you walk in is this aquarium that's filled with dark seaweed and seemingly no other life. Upon closer inspection it was filled with umi-budou, or "ocean grapes." These are a special kind of seaweed - from the main but thin stem sprouts short, thinner stems of about even length and on the end of that tiny marbles. It's another one of the famous things in okinawa but as the sea grapes are much harder to preserve and flavor is not quite candy/cookie friendly like the aforementioned "big three," it is generally only available to the people who goes to Okinawa. In any case, it seems that the sea grapes are quite difficult to preserve and most places keep them (alive?) in tiny fishtanks. They are often served with sushi, but sometimes there are "okinawa modern culinary creations" thing where they are part of salad or pasta too. I cannot comment on the taste, to be honest - just like sushi the texture is more distinct than the taste - but chewing on them and having the tiny marbles pop between your teeth, releasing a slightly tangy juice inside, is not similar to anything I have ever eaten so far.

Behind the said tank is another tank - but actually I think it's an old fishing boat. It was filled with water and lobsters roamed within. Every time I turned around I would find kids standing around the boat, eyes in awe, talking to their friends about how amazing it is to see such large creatures scuttle about in front of them. A few brave ones would pick one up and then put it back to water as a test or courage, maybe. I don't think the lobsters enjoyed it so much, however.

To the center of the store was a counter, and this counter IMMEDIATELY caught my attention. There was three watermelons on it and all are labeled for 1,500 yen. This was about the going price for watermelon (though, I admit it seem to be getting more expensive lately as september approaches), but the one distinction is that one of the three said watermelons is _huge_. I can't quite find an approporiate object to compare it to, but let's just say that the other two smaller ones were dwalfed by it. In retrospect it might have been a simple marketing technique, to get the customer to buy the "last" large melon, and I would probably never know if it's correct, but regardless I would have found the watermelon a good idea anyway. The thing weighted probably about 10-15kg.

After buying the said watermelon, my entire being was focused on it's attendance (heavy watermelon overlords?). However one thing was interesting enough to have cought my eye. In the store they also sold adult stag beetles, each in a little insect box that have small branch and a lot of wood shavngs that they call home. all of the ons-sale beetles were about 3-4 cm long so it would be a stretch to call them large. However, with distinct signs "not for sale" labeled across the top, two boxes contained huge beetles the size of one's computer mouse. The claws looks like they could easily chop one's finger off. The price for the on-sale ones are usually between 20-100 dollars depending on their size, The price seem to increase seemingly exponentially in corrolation to the size, though.

After admiring the stag beetles one more time, we headed out to the car with out omiyage and I wobbled behind trying to find a good tway to carry the watermelon.

-- to be continued --