Traditional Okinawan Dinner Theater

At the Urashima Dinner Theater our teammate opted for steak and veggies, but Jill and I wanted to have a traditional Okinawan dinner while we watched the traditional dance.  Here's how it all started:

So on the left is a very yummy salad of thinly sliced pig ears, cucumbers, carrots, radishes (and these are a big white radish) with peanut vinegar sauce.  Jill and I loved this salad.  At the top are fresh slices of raw fish, or sashimi.  I liked that with the fresh leaf wrapped around it and dipped in the sauce that is just to the right of the fish.  The middle dish is seaweed in a vinegar sauce.  It was kind of slimy, but tasted good.  Jill didn't think so:-)  The dish on the right is peanut tofu with a soy-based sauce.  It had the texture of whipped jello.  All of this was served with plum wine.

Later we had glazed pork belly (surprisingly yummy) and a grilled prawn with sea urchin sauce.  The sauce looked yellow, like a light cheese sauce and was delicious.  We didn't know sea urchins would taste so good.  Then we were served a little pot with a custard-like dish in it of shrimp and vegetables and then steamed.  It tasted a bit like a runny omelette.  Then we had a big plate of tempura, which is battered veggies and shrimp.  Our plates had pumpkin and sweet potato and shrimp.  All of it was so good.

The last course had miso soup, which is like a broth with some herbs in it.  Since you are eating with chopsticks, you drink the soup.  It is served with white sticky rice.  We also had a side of white radish pickles.  Those were a hit.  Very yummy.

For dessert, we had a boat of fresh pineapple.  Juicy and fresh.  Some of the best entertainment of the evening was trying to watch the two of us manage the chopsticks.  We are not proficient, believe me!

While we were eating we were entertained with traditional Okinawan dances.  

This dance is a creative dance that celebrates a year of fruitfulness and abundant crops.  It was created on Hatoma Island.

These were my favorite costumes.  This dance is called the Yotsudake, or "four bamboos," which are the castanets the dancers hold to click in time to the music.  Their original function was to be used for ritual purification of an area where the celebration was being held.  This is the most commonly performed classical dance.  The hats are called Hanagasa, which means flower hat.

This dance is the Hana Fu which is a sad dance about a young girl seeing her lover off at Naha Meigusuku Port.

After the show, we were allowed to have our pictures taken with the dancers after we removed our shoes before going on stage.