#wafutei

[markpickardlife]

#Wafutei #Japanese #restaurant for #dinner (at Okinawa Prefecture) https://www.instagram.com/p/CeqW5W3rpCx/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[toranosukev]

I've been trying to think about what to say about this, and I'm not really sure what to think ... it's sort of complicated. This may be weird, it may be off-base, but somehow this Wafûtei, this "Japanese restaurant" in the San-A shopping mall (I've been to several San-A's now on Okinawa, and they all have a Wafûtei), has struck me more strongly than anything else, as something foreign to Okinawa. Maybe it's because the restaurant takes its Japanese-ness to another level - that its decor and so forth are just something particular that sets it apart - I dunno. But there's something here that made me think, starkly, about being in Okinawa, a place with strong historical cultural ties to both China and Japan, but still distinct from both of them. Having a "Japanese restaurant" next to a Chinese one in the mall highlighted this for me. I dunno. I can go to the university cafeteria, or anywhere else, and eat all kinds of typical Japanese things, from Calpis drink to onigiri to kitsune soba, and it doesn't strike me as out of place at all. But then, for some reason, this Wafûtei really struck me as some kind of colonial imposition. Like a Japanese restaurant in 1930s Taiwan. Like the kind of place the proper Japanese would eat at because they feel the need for a upscale, properly Japanese place, an oasis of Japaneseness, for them, amidst the native culture. I don't mean to say this too strongly - I'm not pointing and screaming COLONIALISM!!! .. I'm just saying there's some interesting parallels, or resonances, and it's interesting to me that this should be the one and only thing (outside of proper historical sites, Japanized placenames, and a few other things...) that should really stand out for me like that...