The シーサー（shiisaa - a kind of lion-dog gargoyle) is a recognisable emblem of Okinawa's indigenous Ryukyu culture. It wards off evil spirits and is usually found on the roof, on the door, or at the gate of Okinawan homes and businesses. They had some great examples on the island.
But one workshop I visited went all out, and their entrance way looked like it had been conjured up by the mind of Jim Henson on LSD.
The shiisaa they made came in all shapes and sizes and were fabulous, but SO expensive. Let me know if anyone wants one for their home - I could probably order it off the net and get it shipped as they're pretty famous.
Another distinctive aspect of Ryukyu culture is the funeral tradition and, in particular, the graves and tombs they use. You can see that the graves are built like little homes. This is so that relatives and friends can gather there once a year and hold parties with food and drinking and music, right under those little roofs.
Some of the tombs are really over the top and are truly little pavilions. This tomb here, though, is in the Chinese style.
It's a memorial to some Chinese slaves who mutineered off a ship and were taken care of before their deaths by the people of Ishigaki. It's supposed to be a symbol of the kindness of these island people, but it is also a reminder of how strongly the Chinese influence can be felt in the ancient Okinawan culture; the links between the Ryukyu and China predate the links with Japan proper.
The 島料理 (shima ryori - island cuisine) on Ishigaki is delicious and puts an interesting twist on Japanese standards with the inclusion of weird and wonderful fruits, vegetables, fishies, and meat. Ishigaki beef is a big draw, and a large part of the land space of the island is given over to dairy farming. The tropical seas provide bountiful fish, with a grilled dish of a bright royal-blue fish (seriously it looks like someone has taken a Sharpie to it) being one of the weirder offerings. There's a quite nice soba noodle dish too (八重山そば - yaeyama soba) that comes in a clear, spicy soup flavoured with the island's peppers and chili oils, rather than with the standard soy or miso of the mainland.
Here you can see one of my breakfasts from the week. The whole thing really illustrates the Japanese basics with a twist idea.
You have rice and miso soup (Japanese), mozuku (a deliciously slimy vinegared seaweed - Okinawan), kinpira (stir-fried carrot and burdock - Japanese) and papaya champuru (stir-fried papaya - Okinawan) and tofu (Japanese) with wild berries (Okinawan).
The purple salad you can see above is made from 紅芋 (beniimo - a purple sweet potato), and really this was the main deal for me. I have told you before about my veneration of the sweet potato and I made it my goal to have it in as many different ways as I could.
So, you can see I had beniimo cheesake, beniimo tart, deep-fried beniimo and even beniimo ice-ceam. So good.
I have loads more to tell, but I think that's all I can bring myself to write. I'm getting depressed at the thought of all the beauty and wonder I had to leave behind. I mean, who wouldn't - this was my view at one lunchtime last week from a restaurant on the beach where I was staying.
One funny quickie before I go. I really did do my best to forget about my work and my stress all the time I was away, but the gods conspired against me and tried to make this task much harder. Look at the bloody poster they had hanging in the lobby of the hotel.
It's for flipping Appi Kogen! That's the ski place in Iwate I have to visit regularly for all those training sessions and study tours with the newbies - the source of a good chunk of all my career-related worries! The poster shows, though, that far away hills are truly green - if you live in a tropical island paradise, I guess it's not so strange to sometimes long for the snowy slopes of the far north.
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