The rundown on grub in Okinawa… (6/30/04)

Okinawanese food is different from Japanese food. I myself couldn’t tell so much… everything was strange to me, even the sushi.
Here is a description of some of the more memorable experiences I had with food.

Drinks:
Healthy Sour Drink – a vinegar-like drink (but not so strong) that actually tasted like a mix of spoiled lemonade and Luria Broth (a broth used for culturing bacteria in the lab)
Pocari Sweat – why the hell would you name any drink “sweat”? It wasn’t that bad though, tasted like diluted gatorade
Sea Snake tea – yes, dried sea snake mixed with hot water makes an excellent tea that remedies most maladies! I’ll pass.
Bitter Cucumber tea – the Japanese have a very strange love and fascination for this vegetable. It’s EVERYWHERE! In food, drinks, desserts, stuffed animals, key chains, posters… I even saw Hello Kitty dressed up in a bitter cucumber costume many times. Weird. Anyway, the tea was really good. It tasted like a weak iced coffee.
I have to say that of anything else, I’ll miss the tea in Japan... Green tea, Jasmine tea and O-cha (bitter cucumber)… they were all very good and very abundant.

Food:
One word… Goo Cup!!! Ha! The Japanese equivalent to Waffle House. This is where you end up at 2:00 in the morning with a strong buzz. Expect similar staff, but with all of their teeth, but don’t expect waffles or grits or pancakes or eggs… expect rice or noodles and various unidentifiable meat forms. Although… I had a very good vegetarian dish there (I was also drunk). Hmmm.
Back to the snake… there’s a very poisonous snake on the island and the Okinawanese like to dry it, cut it up and use it to make soup stock. Mmmm, MMM! Where's THAT dish at Thanksgiving?
Slimey Okra… so, I didn’t realize that Okra is NOT a southern thing. I always think of fried okra at grandma’s house. Well, if you LOVE okra, I can bet you wouldn’t eat it here. It’s very small (a little bigger in diameter than asparagus) and they mix it with some red pepper-like things. The whole mix looks like I stuffed the veggies in my mouth and sneezed them out my nose with a very bad cold. They are COVERED, and I mean covered in sticky, slimy white-ish, yellow slime. I wish I had video of us playing with them!
Green Caviar – looks like beautiful laced tiny green pearls. Fortunately it’s not REAL caviar, but seaweed. It looks good, but I didn’t get a chance to try it.
Rice/Bean patty – sounds kinda good, right? Okay, it’s a dessert. First, they boil the rice until there is no more rice pellet… just goo. Then they strain it to get a nice rice gluten with a consistency like Jell-O but thicker. This is formed into a sand dollar shape (but thicker) and filled with black beans that are slightly puréed and very sweet. I thought it might be good, but the consistency of the rice gluten and the saccharine sweetness of the beans made my stomach turn. (You can also get it with spinach blended into the rice gluten).
Squid on stick – yes, you read that correctly. “Squid on a stick”. No further comment necessary.

So, what did I eat at each meal? Why, let me tell you what was served.
Breakfast:
Fish and rice, noodles and unidentifiable meat, slimy okra, miso soup, and if I was lucky – half a banana. I skipped breakfast.
Lunch:
We had pre-packaged boxes of food. I could always count on the rice and soy sauce, but the accompanying vegetables provided much entertainment (i.e. the slimy okra). Although, I did encounter quite a few very delicious treats… yams, an odd potato puff, some kind of soy product, and other strange veggies.
Dinner:
I tried Soba noodles a few times, but they kept serving it with pork and fish cakes (which looked like white elongated communion wafers, but oily and thick). My stomach couldn’t take it.
So, I generally stuck to rice and mixed vegetables, if I could get it. I had gold fish crackers and beer more than once for dinner.
I guess that’s it for the food.

I miss cheese.
-Sara