Interviews With Some Lovely Ladies
Dance circle friends are like sisters:
Every Tuesday, a group of older ladies gather at the Children's Hall in the Shioya District of Ogimi Village to enjoy dancing. We visited the hall to talk with some of them.
Kyo Miyagi (80)
 Miyagi-san moved from Ogimi to
Ishigaki 30 or so years ago. Then, 15 years ago, she came back to the village to live with her son and his family.
Kyo-san is famous for her "Umu" potato confections. She learned to make Umu when she lived in Ishigaki, for no particular
reason; maybe because the children had nothing to eat for a snack. These snacks are easy to keep so you can make
a batch and keep it and that's convenient.
She cooks up Beni Imo (a purplish potato) and golden potatoes from her own garden with regular potatoes. Then she curls the pretty-colored Beni Imo and gold potatoes in swirls with the regular potatoes, slices them thin and lays them like flower petals in a basket to dry. Then they are deep-fried, coming out like small crackers or biscuits. People can put a little salt or sugar on them to taste. She loves making them for the children and grandchildren and for any kind of special event. The children and grandchildren take them to school for snacks. Her friend Yoshi-san, who lives nearby, helps her and that makes the work go smoothly.
There are specialty Shikwasa citrus trees in the yard and in fields nearby, as well as island vegetables and green vegetables that can regularly be eaten right off. She makes Chanpuru with vegetables and tofu. Kyo-san says she really likes tofu and eats it every day.
Making her own confections to give a little joy to everyone - that, she says, is one of the things that makes her life worthwhile.
Sayo Miyagi (87)
 Miyagi-san says she began living
alone some 30 years ago. She turned her yard into a garden and seasonally grows mugwort, garlic, carrots, Okinawa
scallions and spinach. She is pretty much self-sufficient. Almost all the vegetables she eats she grows herself.
When she picks vegetables, she divides them up and then calls her children and grandchildren on the phone and says,
"I have gathered fresh vegetables. Stop by the house to pick them up." The children are delighted to come and get their share. Seeing her children
and grandchildren's happy faces makes her glad, too.
Growing vegetables is neither difficult nor tiresome, she says. She really likes watching them shoot up and grow. She loves her vegetables cooked. And she also likes tofu. She is not particularly fond of raw foods and rarely eats Sashimi, for example. Of course, she and her friends Hisako Miyagi (84) and Hatsue Miyagi (81) regularly look in on one another to make sure each is all right. Dancing brings them together, as close as sisters. Everyone likes to say they pop into the variety store every so often to say, "I'm doing fine!"
Tsuru Yamashiro (81)
 Tsuru-san lives together with
her husband. She is an expert at making Mozuku stew and mugwort Mochi. She makes them for Seimei, Ohigan and her
children's birthdays.
In the past, you had to pound the mugwort in a mortar to make mugwort Mochi. Now you can just mix it in a mixer, then add in the Mochi powder and knead. You don't just add soup. You put in anything and knead. She makes it as hors d'oeuvres for Buddhist ceremonies and other occasions, she says.
She makes things to take to dance circle once a week and everyone enjoys chatting away about what's going on while they eat. Tsuru-san says she is also learning folk songs, which makes her days full and keeps her busy.
Her daily diet is heavy on leafy vegetables, which she grows around the house along with flowers. Growing them, watching them, eating them - it's all enjoyable, she says.
Take Yamashiro (77)
 Take-san is the sister of Tsuru
Yamashiro's husband, so the two are sister in-laws.
She often makes Njana (green mustard) and sesame sauce with tuna in it. She makes some to eat at dance circle and other occasions when the older ladies gather. She thinks it's better than eating one thing alone for everyone to make a little something and then have a whole lot of things to eat together. Nowadays, it's easy to get tuna in a can to eat with delicious tofu. But back when Take-san was a child, they dressed boiled potatoes and rice bran with Njana.
Now Take-san says she is trying a new menu item. She is trying dressing boiled Handama (Suizenjigusa) with Shikwasa (an Ogimi Village citrus specialty) and vinegar and honey. She enjoys hearing everyone's reaction when they eat it.
A Variety Store Owner Tsune Shinya (86)
 Tsune-san runs her variety store by herself. The store has been in business since before the war.
Tsune-san was in Osaka during World War II. After the war she married and returned here. Since then, with one thing and another, more than fifty years have passed.
Family members got together to build this store with wood they cut in the mountains and brought down. When it was built it had a thatched roof that was later replaced with red tile.
Even though the store doesn't sell a whole lot, she plans to keep it going as long as she is able.
The tofu from Tsune-san's store is known to be so delicious that people even come from neighboring Kunigami Village to buy it, she says. The tofu is delivered around 6:30 in the morning so that's when Tsune-san opens her store. She closes it about 10:30 at night when she goes to bed.
She lives with her son but he is busy, plus he has different tastes in food and works a lot of overtime, so they often eat separately. She prepares her own food, mostly vegetables and other things left over from the store.
She has a garden in the yard where she grows onions, greens and so forth. She cooks and eats Chanpuru and Nbushi with processed pork, meat and tofu.
In the past, she also had a one-cent store selling little candies. Many children came to buy, she says. Children still come to the store every day, but not nearly as many as before when often many would come together. Tsune-san says this makes her a little lonely, but she means to keep running the store as long as she is physically able.
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