Aside from a childhood obsession with Legos, I’ve never really been huge into architecture and building, yet something about Japanese style roofing has always caught my eye. I did another post on roofs in Kyoto and one on clay that showed a bit about how roofs are put together in Okinawa and Japan, but a recent trip
Every Year students around Japan have days specifically set aside for school outings. Unlike western field trip that usually have some sort of cultural theme, Japanese Ensoku are usually geared towards giving the students time outside to enjoy nature. Elementary Elementary ensoku are usually comprised of a walk to local landmark or park where
Golden Week marks a string of holidays around the start of May in Japan. With three official days off, many people take the opportunity to use a few of their precious vacation days (nenkyu) to travel or otherwise relax for an extended period. This year, the holidays fall on Monday, Thursday, and Friday, so with
Every culture has its own history of art and tool development. One of the most interesting things about Japan, is that it has such a long and isolated history. The fact that for much of Japan’s history it was culturally isolated, means we can find answers to some of today’s questions in the relics of
Here’s part two and the second half of our trip through Kinjo Town’s Ishidatami, the Rock Road around Shuri Castle in Okinawa. From the rest house, we started climbing uphill.
Just up the way is an area called Uchinagusukudake. The place has several small shrines, shisa, and trees that are over 200 years old.
The area has Giant Akage (bischofia javanica) This tree is over 300 years old and has a small red gate and shrine in front of it. Especially old and large trees are often thought to contain spirits or kami.
This section of the rock road goes through a small residential neighborhood. This wall had beautiful purple flowers, the same I had seen earlier at the soba restaurant.
Just around the corner I found these Orchids and another red flower similar to a peace lilly but with red.
After walking through the area with flowers, the path heads down again and back towards Shuri Castle. Here’s another map of the route through Kinjo Town.
Since it was Golden Week and there were many tourists, we didn’t enter Shuri Castle. On the left is the gate leading into the Castle Grounds, and on the right is an old stone gate to the Ryukyu Kings’ Tombs.
Past Shuri, a path curved down through the surrounding greenery. Here you’ll find a barred gate which is the entrance to a tunnel that housed the 32nd Army Headquarters Shelter. The tunnels housed over 1000 people before they were evacuated and mostly destroyed.
Past the Headquarters is a small pond with a small island in the center. Here I caught a family of Mandarin Ducks walking nearby.
Ryutan pond is past Shuri Castle on the North side. Around it there are many tree-shaded paths with relatively tame animals all over.
Along the left side of the pond, I found these tall plants with striking red flowers in bloom.
Aside from the ducks, Ryutan pond is full of carp and snapping turtles. This was at the far corner where the trees and history meets the modern city around Shuri.
I hope you enjoyed Kinjo’s Ishidatami.
Milk, vegetable soba, tempura benimo, orange
This meal is just shy of a 5 on the rice meter thanks to the orange and adopted-ness of soba. Though it’s ‘vegetable’ it still has pork in it. Soba is a common noodle in Japan, here its served with a broth (not shown) that will heat the noodles and veggies. The benimo is a type of sweet potato that is purple in color. It was covered in tempura flower then fried.
Milk, barley rice, nikujaga, pickled salad, almond karu
Neither meat nor potatoes are very Japanese, but this meal is saved from being a 3 by that little packet you see next to the milk. Nikujaga is simply ‘meat and potatoes’ (niku=mean jagaimo= potatoes). Its a delicious dish that is essentially potatoes boiled in water, soy, a bit of sugar, and other seasonings with meat and other vegetables, then cooked down so that the broth becomes more of a sauce. The potatoes get the brown color from the soy. Very delicious, and a definite adaptation from Japan. The salad was various young vegetables and a little ham in a sweet/sour dressing.
Finally the little packet is almond slivers and mini dried fishes meant to be eaten whole.
Milk, barley rice, beansprout salad, sho-ronpo-, chingensai soup, grapefruit
This meal has a definite Chinese bent to it, with meat filled dumplings (sho-ronpo-) and the soup. This is probably one of my favorite soups, with egg, mushroom, chingensai (the leafy vegetable), and the harusame (bean noodles) we saw last week. The salad was mostly beansprouts with ham and spinach.
Milk, kufa-ju-shi-, baked fish, tofu soup, passion fruit jelly
This is a pretty Japanese meal, with seasoned rice (I’ve never made it but its similar to fried rice, only not fried. Checkout the link above to a recipe in Japanese, the pictures kinda show how it goes). The fish was baked in a slightly sweet sauce. The soup was made with yushi dofu, a crumbly kind of oily? tofu in a broth.
Milk, chicken curry rice, daikon and cucumber salad
A simple, quick, delicious meal. Everything you need to know about chicken curry can be found here. The salad was daikon and cucumber in a sweet and sour dressing with bonito flakes.
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Kinjo Town surrounds the Shuri Castle area in Okinawa. While Shuri is impressive in its own right, there is much to see outside the Castle grounds. During this past Golden Week, I took a trip to the Okinawan Mainland, and a friend was kind enough to show me a few out-of-the-way spots. Through Kinjo Town runs the ‘Ishidatami’ or Rock Road, a walkway paved in history and adorned with interesting and beautiful flowers along the way. Follow along for a taste of Kinjo Town.
On the way to to our start, we passed one of Shuri Castle’s side gates. The area is full of steep roads and interesting places.
We also stopped at a nearby soba shop for lunch before beginning our walk. This Shisa is a traditional statue on Okinawan homes used to protect against evil spirits and bad luck.
The place we ate was very busy so we sat outside in an almost garden-like area where I found this purple flower.
For Lunch, I had soki soba, or buckwheat noodles in broth topped with rib meat. It is another traditional Okinawan food.
Right at the start of our walk, we found these Hanging Heliconias. Conveniently there was a nearby sign that labeled the flowers along the route in English and Japanese.
This is the first of two springs we saw along the route. These were used for drinking and washing by the people of Kinjo Town. Spots like these were marked by small tiles with maps of the area.
These white and pink flowers were labeled as Sokei-Nozen, and hung above a wall.
Here is an old style gate with clay tiles of the same kind of construction seen at the Udun Palace.
The second spring was below the road level and had a pool in which crabs lived. In the second photo you can see where the water flows out at times.
About half-way along the path, right before a rather steep slope (or just after if you go the other way) there is a small rest house with tatami mats where you can take a load off.
Here’s a map of the area in Japanese with the various sites around Shuri marked. Check out part 2 for the walk north through the grounds along the rock road to the pond above Shuri.
Katsu don is now a classic lunch dish in Japan, that while not very traditional, has almost become a kind of Japanese soul food. When Japanese people want a quick, hearty meal at a restaurant they’re likely to order curry, a noodle dish, or katsu don. Katsu is a fried pork cutlet.
Traditionally, most Japanese ate little or no meat, so the dish was developed after the Meiji era when Japan was opened to the wider world. A don, however, just means rice bowl, so a katsu don is a rice bowl with a katsu (and usually vegetables and egg) on top. If you live in Japan, you can probably find prepared katsu in your freezer section, in ether minced or tenderloin. There are two types of katsu, one using the fatty cut, and the other lean. If you’re in a hurry feel free to fry up a quick katsu and throw it on some rice with an egg for a quick meal. If you have a little more time, here’s a recipe from scratch.
The first thing you’ll want to do is set some rice cooking. You want fresh, hot rice so that it will help cook the egg you’re going to add later. Prepare one serving of rice for each katsu don you intend to prepare.
You can use just about any kind of white meat you like. I prefer lean meat so that’s what I bought. In my local super there was a small package of two thin (about 2 cm) pre-tenderized pork cutlets. I trimmed the excess fat. Of course, most Japanese chefs would opt to keep the fat on. Lightly season the pork with salt and pepper and a little garlic if you like.
Prepare your vegetables. I selected vegetables I had on hand. You can add any you’d like. Simply cut them finely before hand, then set them simmering in a fry pan with a little olive oil. The video doesn’t show this, but you will want to add the mushrooms about 5 minutes after the other vegetables since they’ll cook faster.
Timing is important here since you want everything to finish just before the katsu is done frying. You can cook the vegetables on low heat to give yourself time.
Prep four plates or bowls. Tupperware works great here. One should have corn starch (you can use flour instead), one flour, one a beaten egg, and one the panko. Add a little bit of salt and pepper to the egg to season it.
In a pan (preferably one for the purpose with a thermometer), put oil on medium heat until it gets to 150*C then turn to low.
Take your pork cutlets and dredge them in corn starch, being sure to get the sides, then dredge in the egg, flour, egg, and finally panko. If you’re only making one or two katsu don’t use the whole package of katsu or flower. You’ll only need enough to cover the pork.
When your oil gets to 160*C gently place your breaded pork into the oil. Be careful not to burn yourself. Keep the heat on low, your oil temp will probably fall to about 140 which is where you’ll keep it. Most packages will suggest a higher temp, but you want to cook it low and slow for the extra crunch. Keep an eye on your vegetables and remove them from heat when they’re cooked through but not soggy. If you’ve timed things right, your rice should be done. You can leave it in a rice cooker to stay warm, or in its pan.
Add a splash of soy sauce to your vegetables.
Turn the katsu in the oil with long hashi (chopsticks) every few minutes. Try not to pierce the breading. They will probably take about 10 minutes, but you’ll want to let them cook at around 140 until they are golden brown. When the color starts to turn brown on the inside (not the panko), turn the heat up just a little so that the oil goes back up to 160.
Prep your other egg in a small bowl. Get your don (bowls) ready, and scoop a serving of rice, and place the hot vegetables over. Add a little more soy sauce over top.
Take the katsu out when they are done. You can put them in an oil rack to help remove oil (healthier) or put them right onto a cutting tray (more oil, more delicious, less healthy). Either way, cut the katsu into hashi-sized pieces and place them immediately over the rice. Pour the raw egg over each bowl and serve.
**You may be tempted to use the left over egg from dredging. That egg touched raw pork, and while the egg will cook over the steamed rice and katsu, you’re safer using a fresh egg. The raw egg will cook, if you timed things correctly, but you use a raw egg in food at your own risk.
Unlike most of my previous Japanese food posts, I’ve never seen this made before. It’s a favorite of mine that I’ve had for lunch countless times, but I can’t say if my recipe is authentic or not. Likely, it’s a decent take (and a slightly healthier version) of a not so traditional classic. I hope you enjoy it.
One last thing. If you’d like to add a bit more flavor, you can add ton katsu sauce to the vegetables or on top of the pork. It’s a semi-sweet sauce common on a rice-bowl free version of the dish.
Aside from a childhood obsession with Legos, I’ve never really been huge into architecture and building, yet something about Japanese style roofing has always caught my eye. I did another post on roofs in Kyoto and one on clay that showed a bit about how roofs are put together in Okinawa and Japan, but a recent trip to the Shikina Royal Gardens gave me the opportunity to learn more about how Okinawan roofs were made while at the Udun Palace.
The first part of any roof is a frame, and like most roofs I’ve seen, the Okinawan roofs use simple wood, similar to 2×4 to create a rigid grid. On top of that is where things start to very by time and location. In the Shikina Gardens, I found one roof with a layer of thin sticks, above the frame You might wonder at this, but the sticks are likely far cheaper than finely cut boards. In order to cover a roof in boards, you would need planing saws and nails. Japan is often very humid, so nails were never a good option for building. Instead, most Japanese architecture relied on interlocking joints that also made for easy rebuilding after natural disasters. Japanese saws are also not well suited for horizontal cutting, making it far easier to cut large rough wood for the frame. Since the sticks would do little to protect against rain, above that was placed red clay tiles joined with a kind of plaster.
Inside Shikina Garden’s Kago House was a selection of original tiles as well as a drawing of the process used to create them. The main tiles use were simply 1/4 of a topless cone of clay. The end and corner pieces were smaller but more ornate. The quarter pieces were alternated up and down, and interlocked to create a water-proof barrier and the distinctive Okinawan style still seen today. Where the curving ends met, the decorative corner pieces were installed to cap the gaps.
This drawing shows the various tools used in the creation of the roof tiles on the left. The right shows the beginning of the process, including the creating of clay and the rolling of clay on a rock guide.
This drawing sows the creation of the smaller, decorative, end and corner pieces. These did not taper and were about 30cm long by 15cm wide. They were full halves rather than quarters.
Finally, this shows the creation of the larger tiles. The clay from the first image is wrapped around a form and sealed. When it dries, the inner mold is removed and the cone is broken in half, then quarters. The final dimensions were about 24cm wide tapering to 18 cm along the 24cm length.
These heavy clay tiles, combined with generally low sturdy construction of older Okinawan homes helped combat turbulent weather such as typhoons. Sometimes, bags of small rocks were also placed on the roofs to help keep the tiles in place during extreme weather.
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よろしくおねがいします！
-Benjamin Martin
Author of Samurai Awakening.
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