So Kevin is here to make the world’s best web site even better. He craves goat and so we prepare a goat stew.

Goat in Japanese is Yagi

Goat with Okinawan vegetables.

Good though that meal was, lunch was much better. Naoko had told me that   an ordinary house that can been seen from mine was now an  izakaya, which is a  bar, restaurant place.

Riotous publicity. The little Orion paper lanterns give it away.

In we go to warm welcome from Ishigaki san and Noha san, grinning Okinawa ladies who run the place and do all the cooking and as we learn the gardening and fishing too. We cry “sakana!” which means fish. Long one-sided discussion ensues. One sided because we say nothing and they say a lot, none of which can be understood. We say “Oichi!” which means delicious.

They bring the meal which is steamed reef fish with beni imo , carrot, mushrooms wrapped in a slice of beef, tarot, tofu, cabbage. Side dishes of miso soup, rice with ground up fish, cucumber and seafood, something else and beans in batter, and something else.

Ishigaki san is very attentive and laughs uproariously at our attempts to speak Japanese. She helps Kevin deal with his fish with chopsticks. She then brings us sashimi of little fish that she had caught that morning. We sit by the window with view over the East China Sea and she points to where she caught them. Next she brings out a dish of steaming shell-fish and feeds them to me .

Have we been introduced?

What fun

Anyone know what these are?

Then we had  fruit and a   deep-fried Okinawan doughnut thing. We drank green tea throughout. Everything served on hand-made Okinawa pottery. Anyway, this was an astonishing meal and totally unexpected. Everything we ate was either grown in the garden in front of the house or scooped out of the sea in front of the house. I can walk here from my house in 4 mins 33 secs and they serve pitchers of beer. This makes me face the future with renewed enthusiasm.

Thanks Ishigakai san and Noha san.

Eat here
Eat here now

We then go snorkel.

Kevin watches fish