Okinawan Food

While I was in Japan few months ago, there was a tv show featuring the healthy diet taken by Miss Universe candidates.  Erica Angyal, who is from Sydney Australia, is a nutritionist who works for Miss Universe Japan as a health consultant, and on the tv show she flew to Okinawa to discover what is so good about Okinawan food and why people in Okinawa live longer than anyone else in the world.

Okinawa is one of Japan’s southern prefectures, and consists of hundreds of islands in a chain over 1,000 km long.

It was only 100 years ago that the kingdom of Okinawa was incorporated into Japan, and the southern islands still maintain their own distinctive culture, language and cuisine. Okinawan cooking tends toward stronger and spicier flavors than Japanese food, and is more heavily influenced by Chinese cooking styles.

I’d say Okinawa has the strongest accent in their language as Japanese among all the prefectures in Japan.  Osaka people speak Osaka dialect, and Fukuoka people speak Fukuoka dialect.  Some of them are very difficult to listen to, but still understandable.  But, Okinawan language is very different!  That’s what makes this place to be a popular tourist destination for other Japanese people.  Different culture, different life style, and different food.  But, still the same country.

The food you see in Okinawa often contain pork and seafood.  Pork is a very important ingredient there, and every part of the pig is used: including feet, ears to tripes.  And, because Okinawa has a tropical climate and is surrounded by ocean, many local seafoods and seaweeds are used in cooking, and some of them are not available in Japan’s main island.

Other foods that are commonly used in Okinawan cuisine are black sugar, tropical fruits and vegetables, brawn rice, and awamori, which is an Okinawan brandy-like liquor made from rice.  Okinawan people are known as big drinkers! (awamori is very strong alcohol drink)

The reason why Okinawan people are the most long-lived on earth is not only these food.  It’s because of HOW people eat them everyday.  Their everyday meal contains rice, soup, and few side dishes.  There are many vegetables, seaweed and seafood used, and the common cooking method is stir-frying.  They use olive oil very often too.  Eating many kinds of food everyday is very ideal thing in order to take different nutritions.  Besides, most of the food they eat are very healthy – seaweeds are good for skin and hair, brown rice is more nutritious than white rice, and seafood gives you Omega-3 which can help to lower the amount of cholesterol in the body.

I’ve been to Okinawa twice in my life:  the first time was to join the home-stay program at American family in Okinawa vase.  I was 17 years old, and I organised everything by myself …  all  my family was so worried, but I wasn’t.  I had a big interest in foreign country (English) and wanted to experience something unique.  The second time was to get scuba diving licence in Okinawa.  I organised this by myself too, I even bought some equipments for the trip including dry suit and an under-water camera. :p

While in Okinawa, I enjoyed Okinawan food everyday.  There are few small restaurants around the hotel I stayed, and these restaurants served home-style Okinawan food.   Very delicious!   Typical Okinawan food such as chanpuru dishes including tofu chanpuru and go-ya chanpuru, and rafuti (pork stewed in miso, soy sauce, sugar and awamori).

If you get a chance to visit this “health paradise”, here are the list of Okinawan food I recommend! :

Tofu chanpuru - stir-fried tofu dish

Go-ya chanpuru - stir-fried go-ya (bitter melon) dish

Rafuti - slow cooked, stewed pork

Taco rice – basically a taco that uses rice instead of a taco shell.

Mimigaa – pig’s ear in vinegar

Saataa andagi - Okinawan doughnuts

Eating All Day

It was a weekend with lots of food for me…  wake up, eat bagel, get Happy Meal from McDonald’s, have a muffin + black coffee at Fast Eddy, then dinner at South Ocean …  I really wonder where this appetite comes from.

Reading the paper is a thing that keeps me connecting to the world: although some of them are not pleasant news such as government mining tax (it affects the value of Australian dollars) and Rick Harts bankruptcy (because I still have a gift voucher).  I seldom get to watch/read news on tv and internet (I really should do that), so going to the cafes and browsing the paper while sipping the coffee is kind of a good chance to educate myself.  It’s good that McDonalds breakfast McValue Meal comes with a copy of The West Australian (only for limited time though)

By the way, my brother’s birthday is coming up!  I buy a birthday cake online and get it sent to the house every year for him   I’m still choosing what cake I should buy this year…  ummm,  I would make one for him if I was in Japan!

The Raw Food and Smoothie Bar

After reading the reviews of The Raw Kitchen, I was excited to try out their food at Raw Food and Smoothie Bar in Fremantle Markets.  All the food they serve there are raw (uncooked), including sweet nuts and chocolate balls and delicious pizza.

When I arrived the stall, the owner couple (I believe) looked so busy as there was a line of people waiting to order.  The hand-written menu board, the showcase of ready-made food and the cook books of healthy food arranged on the top of the counter.. although the shop is small, everything around there looked so simple and natural.

As my turn came, I ordered one of their “raw” smoothie, Bananarama, which contains fresh banana, almond milk etc.  He opened the fridge and put a couple of banana and some ingredient into a blender, and few seconds later my smoothie was done!

Wow..  it looked so thick!  Freshly made with real banana…

I loved the taste, I must say.  Especially, knowing that there is no “unwanted” or “additional” ingredients used, I’m glad that I tried.

The pizza looked so nice too, but my stomach was pretty full from the lunch I had just few minutes ago and I only had a space for 1 glass of smoothie then.  I’d like to try out their food and sweet on my next visit.

I love their concept, being eco and animal friendly.  The owners have a strong passion for raw food, and they believe that health can be achievable by eating nourishing food.  Their greatest passion is for the education of kids, and they offer a variety of workshops and information classes where people can learn what’s so good about eating raw food.

This is the place where you can enjoy the real healthy food made by people who care.

Celebrating PacMan’s 30th Birthday

You may have played this Pac-man game before, an arcade game developed by Namco.  Or you may at least have heard the name before.  This game was first released in Japan on May 22, 1980.  Which means…. it is Pac-Man’s 30th birthday today!

If you go to www.google.com today, you can enjoy Pac-Man game for free!

And…

If you double click the “Insert Coin” button, you will get …

Ms. PacMan joined to the game.

You can also play the game after today by finding the logo here in Google’s logo archives. Just look it up in the 2010 April-June section. That’s where it will be filed, in the future.

Pom Poko – Ghibli

It sounds like I’ve been watching Japanese cartoon at home almost everyday, as I’ve just wrote about Tales of Earthsea, but I do enjoy watching cartoon quite often.  I rented this Ghibli film “Pom Poko” (1994) just recently and I must say I did enjoyed the whole story.

Well, I’ve already watched this film few times in the past, but watching it again here in Perth reminded me of all the feelings about Japan and made me to rethink about the cohabitation of humans and animals.

The story is about tanuki, Japanese raccoon dogs, trying to survive the late 1960s.  A gigantic and ongoing suburban development near Tokyo, Japan, threatens a group of wild tanuki.  As the development is cutting into their forest habitat, tanuki had to think what they should do to protect their land from humans.

In this film, you can enjoy listening to lots of old Japanese songs including antagata-dokosa (a traditional warabe uta of Kumamoto prefecture) , and the appearance of famous Japanese monsters and mythological creatures.  In Japanese folklore tanuki has supernatural shape-shifting powers to trick humans. In this film tanuki transform themselves into Japanese monsters and mythological creatures to scare people: such as rokurokubi, noppera-bo and fujin raijin.

The film ends on something of a bittersweet note for the tanuki.  Throughout the film there is a lot of comedy as well as ecological messages.  The film reminds me of old Japan, especially the time I was a kid.  Japan has changed a lot, I think.  No one would believe that I was climbing on trees, catching zarigani (crawfish), fighting with wild monkeys and playing with beautiful medaka (killifish) just 10 years ago near my house!

(Pom Poko Characters )