Okinawa: Afternoon Landscape | Japan-Guides Home

type

status

date

slug

summary

category

icon

password

😀

The base color of Okinawa is “Miyako Blue”. The sea and sky are indistinguishably blue in one place, with the unique brightness and quietness of Miyako Island, which is not in my memory of all the years of mountains and rivers. Later, my mom called my friend and told her that we went to the beach every day, and that the sea was beautiful.

The wide corridor where the elevator meanders on the second floor of the hotel picks up the street bridge to the monorail station. Naha City is busy from early morning. The sunlight on the overpass stretched the shadows of the six people into long, thin lines, reflecting them on the cars passing under the bridge and on the traffic-marked asphalt, floating like a passing cloud.

There is no JR on Okinawa Island, no subway in Naha City, and the light-rail tram set up in the middle of the road does its job of operating without traffic jams. The two small cars are painted with the red buildings of Shurijo Castle, Ryukyu lions, and red Fuchsia flowers. Before stopping, a sweet and clear female voice announces the station in English and Japanese, with the sound of a car bell ringing in an Okinawan folk song. The restroom in the station is not big, but the floor, toilet, counter, mirror and garbage can are kept clean in Japanese style. Japan's postal minister, Noda Seiko's first job was as a white-collar worker at the Imperial Hotel, where she was trained to clean toilets. When she couldn't do the job she hated, her predecessor, who worked with her, actually reached for a cup of toilet water after cleaning the toilet and drank it. Noda said to herself that even if she had to clean toilets for the rest of her life, she would be the best at it. On the last day of training, after cleaning the toilet, Seiko Noda drank a cup of toilet water.

The moment you follow the street signs and easily find your destination, ask, “So you are here too! Hidden in a quiet alleyway is the small landscape garden of Wansongyuan. When you climb the steps, the castle is made of dark gray rocks, and when you are tired, you can sit in the shade and enjoy the fragrance of the breeze and pine leaves in front of your eyes.

The main hall to walk barefoot on the chilly wooden floor, a staff member at the door to hand out a plastic bag, carrying a shoe bag through the throne, above the Kangxi Emperor's Royal Gift of “Zhongshan ShiTu” four in the middle of the gold characters, four words down there are three left and right symmetry; Ryukyu King is only the King, can not be called the King.

King Kim Bok-ryong, 55 years old, sitting on the four-clawed dragon chair in the main hall of Shurijo Castle in 1452. He was anxious about whom to pass the throne to. Since the founding king of the Sangseo dynasty, Sangbaji, the throne had never been passed on to the next generation, and in the case of King Kim Bok, it was still being passed on from brother to brother. Of course, he wanted to pass the throne to his own son, Jiru, and made him his son. Soon after the death of King Kim Bok, did not leave the last photo, his younger brother Buri intended to “brother end brother and”, how could Chiru agree: I am the son of the world ah! The two of them hurt each other, and each other's feelings for each other. Uncle and nephew hurt each other, each other to make up for the knife, a fire burned clean Shuri Castle, uncle and nephew together to die. In 1963, archaeologists accidentally found Uncle Bree's urn with a note that he died at the age of 58. That's not true. He was 47 years old when both uncle and nephew died. There is only one explanation left: Bree did not die, but managed to escape under the cover of his men. After being recommended for the vacant throne, Sang Tae-goo became the sixth king of the Sang Dynasty of the Ryukyu Kingdom as the younger brother of the king. As soon as he took office, he minted the copper coin “Dashi Tongbao”, which was modeled after Yongle Tongbao. Three years later, the Japanese monks to the Ryukyus missionary, deeply Shang Taijiu reuse favor, since then Buddhism in the Ryukyu Kingdom flourished.

Outside the city planted all over the blood tree, leaves can be wrapped in food, the trunk contains red sap, the tree posture is strong and healthy, take the green shade to protect the soil, the tree in the “sweat and blood BMW”. The fruit is like a very tall olive tree, named Duying, Edo period was mistaken for olives, Kojima roadside common tree with green and red leaves, is Duying's old leaves fall before the change from green to red. Recognize the sparrow ficus, the long aerial roots are not as soft and gentle as you think, it will strangle the parasitic plants mercilessly, and survive by rooting on rocks and stone walls. Before one reaches Naha, Nori has concerns: will he run into Hiruna? At the end of Kawaguchi no Natsu, an Okinawan demon that turns into a human being, Kiruna, who is a stone lion, saw what happened to Koku on TV and wrote a letter to the Uehara family, asking them to bring Koku over to live with them, and the image of the meeting with Koku stayed in my heart, and I was really touched at that time. The book is like that photo: a big round head with two big round eyes, uneven teeth, Okinawan people say it is the spirit of the old banyan tree, the height of a baby, but very good at torturing people, like to eat fish, but each time to eat only one eye, go out at night have to be careful to watch out for the hand of the lantern was snatched away by it. In the Shuri area, people put some sweet potatoes in the banyan tree where it hides, and it will become your friend in a week. If you burn down the old banyan tree or smash nails into it, Hiruna will definitely break up with you, and even if you speak ill of it from far away, it will hear you and take revenge. Don't mistake Hiruna for a god!

Passing by Yakadai in the late afternoon, the foodie lion ramen store that we have been taking pictures of before. The warm curtains with black lettering on a red background were already up. We debated about whether we should go in for an extra meal? Eat? Afraid to jeopardize the planned Ishigaki Beef Hot Pot at 5 or 6 o'clock; not eat? It is better to replenish a bit of energy.

Tables, chairs, and wooden walls were dark brown, and the TV overhead was announcing who was the most popular female movie star of the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's. I was surprised to see Momoe's name on it. I was surprised to see Momoe's name at once, and it was really kind of me. I remembered a Momoe album magazine that I had lost in middle school, and it said that Yamaguchi Momoe was the winner of the “People's Favorite Star” contest. The round wall clock, whose age is not clear, slowly paced back in my memory to 1:30 in the afternoon of a spring thirty years ago.

The Yakadai Equatorial Ramen Shuriken Ekimae Store, open from 11:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m., is a true late-night eatery. Like Starbucks, it belongs to the “third space” outside of home and work. Japan has a 24-hour work system, and those who work late at night after working overtime can't catch the light rail subway that stops running at 1:00 a.m. to go home, and it's not economically cost-effective to rent a hotel, so they can find an izakaya or ramen store to have a meal and take a snooze, and then go home or go to work again when the 4:30 a.m. morning light rail subway starts operating. Then you can go home or to work.

Eatery owners in Japanese dramas are rarely seen as articulate. In ramen store and izakaya culture, the owner will always keep a distance from the diners, the owner is the owner, the diners are the diners, and see Japanese ambiguity as the opening words of The Lonely Gourmet: “The solitary act of becoming as free as you want to become for a short time, undisturbed, effortlessly eating, without being tied down by time or society, of blissfully filling your stomach. is precisely the supreme cure that equality confers on modern man.” The cafeteria story is a real picture of any articulate, humane owner. The family that opened the door at 5:30 p.m. to the “My Naha Tonkatsu” restaurant downstairs, where you can eat Okinawa's native Agu pork and Ishigaki beef, would have been the first two customers. After following the waiter to the inner dining area, the island cuisine begins with yuanyang hot pot with soybean milk and clear broth. The broth is served in small bottles with lemon vinaigrette and sesame salt, which I curiously pick up and smell, simply trying to figure out which bottle is soy sauce and which is vinegar.

In ancient times, Japan regarded rice as a sacred spiritual food, and the slaughter of livestock was considered unkind; in addition, there were few plains on the mainland, making it difficult to raise many livestock. Okinawa has always existed as the Ryukyu Kingdom, and the food habits of the Japanese mainland are not uniform. The delicious Agu pig came from our “Ming” Dynasty Kingdom, and the Ryukyu King tasted it and immediately designated it as an imperial ingredient. After several wars, in the 1980s, there were only about 30 pure Agu pigs left, and the farmers could not stand it, so they carefully chose other excellent breeds to actively breed with the Agu, and the Agu pig in our conception today can be called an “Agu pig” as long as 50% of its bloodline is pure. The cholesterol of the Ago pig is one-fourth of that of other pig breeds. Okinawan cuisine is most similar to that of China, in that a pig can be eaten from the beginning to the end without wasting any of its food, except for its grunting. The most famous way to eat it is to marinate it in Awamori and brown sugar and then braise it, as in “The Army of Cooking Things”, and when it comes out of the pot, you can scratch it with chopsticks, and it fills the room with flavor. The pork at my pork restaurant is delivered directly from the island's three regular ranches, and there's a “Ctrip Gourmet Forest” sign on the front counter, which is quite friendly.

Beef has been eaten in Japan since the Meiji Restoration, and after World War II, when the high nutritional value of beef was realized, beef was commonly served on the dinner table, and in just a decade or so, Japan bred the world's highest-priced and most delicious beef. Ishigaki beef is Okinawa's famous cattle, especially in Ishigaki Island, born and raised, meet certain conditions of food cattle, two thousand years because of Okinawa on the menu of the summit of the Western countries and became famous. Food “Spirit of the halberd” Season 1, Episode 7, intended to eat halberd “Gaikan Research Association” for themselves, Mito Yuime head of short blonde hair, brown skin, often wearing nudity high western style clothing, family-run “Mito meat” is the beef industry leader, she herself is the best at beef, she is very good at beef. The family runs “Mito Meat” is the beef industry leader, she herself is the most skilled in meat cuisine, with the ability to easily and freely operate the whole leg of beef strange power, and cooking methods are exceptionally delicate, the lips can feel the exact temperature of the meat cuisine. In the food fight with Tronjin, he neglects to match the ingredients and loses. The “Charabanc steak rice bowl” made by Tronzin with cheap meat was so good that the judges almost lost their minds and swept it away on the spot. The key sentence is “A5 and beef cut into a flower. Place the meat at right angles to the direction of the fibers and the direction of the fire. This will equalize the heat on the beef and bring out the juices. Underneath the flower petals, the garlic fried rice sauteed in butter and butter is also extremely delicious.”

Ishigaki Beef A5 grade is calculated by the percentage of beef taken out of the cow after autopsy to the weight of the whole cow, and is divided into three grades of A, B, and C. The amount of frost, the firmness of the meat, and the luster of the fat are the criteria for the grading. Marbled beef is a term used to describe beef whose fat distribution resembles that of frost. A piece of beef folded and clamped, as if folding a Russian wave pleated skirt, into the boiling pot of soybean milk, do not dare to spread the hands, silent dozens of seconds to take out dipped in the sauce entrance, as if the sheer spring rains at the right time to activate the raucous land of the mid-spring, canon bells in the soybean milk, the waiter carried a large jug of sparing no effort to refill it; Ago pig Ishigaki cattle, sticky island tofu, soft seaweed, sinewy buckwheat noodles. A hot pot meal is a beautiful Chopin narrative of meat, and to play it well, you have to play the vegetable exercises written by the composer to make it work.

The longevity of Okinawan people exceeds that of the main island of Japan, and sea grapes are responsible for much of it. The scientific name is “long stem grape fern algae”, wild algae, more than 30 years ago, some people tried to cultivate artificially, and began to simulate the wild growth environment at the bottom of the stone trough, but the growth was sparse, and it was far from the goal of a bunch of sea grapes of “6-8 centimeters, full of grains”. Changed to use the knot net fixed mother algae planted on the net, two nets clamped sunk into the stone trough, a week later, through the gap between the grid, sea grapes grow out evenly. Too much light is not good, sea grapes two hours on the wilt, according to the season to increase or decrease the number of layers of shade net, to create a suitable sea grapes for light synthesis of light, and then by the growth of sea grapes to increase the nutrient fertilizer. The process of artificially cultivating delicate sea grapes is not unlike the process of carrying a child for ten months and raising a child through hard work.

japan guides