JAWing On – Life on Okinawa

Taki and I received our replacement vehicle Sunday. We decided to take it out for a drive up North and headed for Miyazato Soba. The facility is a non-assuming place that looks like it was one of the many temporary tin huts built back in the mid-seventies when everyone was getting ready for the Expo. The walls are bare of decoration; tables have simple plastic tablecloths; and the chairs are plastic patio furniture. But there is plenty space in between tables, so the customers are not eating on top of one another. It’s a no frills type of eatery where you purchase tickets from a machine, hand them over to a staff member, and wait about fifteen minutes for the food to be delivered. The soba is unusual. In addition to the required noodles and pork, it also has kombu (seaweed) and one of the most flavorful stocks I have eaten in a long time. We each ordered the small size, which is about half the regular size and great if you have children. This allowed enough room for one of my favorite local dishes, obaa curry, which we split between the two of us. Although the golden yellow curry wasn’t chunky-style and didn’t have bell peppers, it was very tasty and just like I remembered. The whole meal only cost us one thousand yen!