What is a Goya? (2)

Goya grows in the shade of its own vines. It is a prolific vegetable and a mainstay of Okinawa cooking.

What is a Goya?

Sometimes called bitter gourd, goya is Okinawa's signature vegetable. You sometimes find it in salads, but mostly it is cooked in a frying pan to be added to stir-fry dishes. The most famous of those is surely goya champuru, which is a hodgepodge of scrambled egg, Spam, and goya.

To prepare the goya, wash it but don't even attempt to peel it. Instead, split it lengthwise and scrape out the inner white pulp. Next, slice it into thin half moons, as if you were slicing celery for salad. Finally, take a handful of salt and rub it into the goya slices and wait for about 15 minutes. Then, rinse the slices to get rid of the salt and a lot of the bitter taste of the goya. Now you are ready to cook with goya.

Rain, Rain

Okinawa gets a lot of rain. Everyone, including this "shisha", learns to live with it. As in the rest of Japan (except for Hokkaido) there is a rainy season--May in Okinawa, June on the main island Honshu. This year, at least so far, the rain is cool and refreshing.

Rain is what you make of it. Today it is misty and moody, just the thing to awaken one's inner romanticist and make creativity sprout. I personally am taking advantage of the season to go on a writing retreat. Be back at the end of June!

Everybody Loves a Water Buffalo

In Okinawa, the water buffalo is the image character for some of the smaller islands in the Ryukyu chain. Carts pulled by patient water buffalo and managed by sanshin-playing tour conductors are the main attraction on picturesque Taketomi and Yubu islands.

To my surprise, water buffalo are almost invisible on the main island of Okinawa itself. Once upon a time, they were the muscle behind the rice paddies and the sugar mills, but times have changed and they have been replaced by machines.

In a recent visit to Okinawa, I made inquiries about where to see water buffalo. Guess what? I was told the best place to find out details about raising water buffalo is from the Tama Zoological Garden, located in Tokyo.

I can see the trees of the Tama Zoo from my house.