Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

What does it mean to be strong?

It implies hardness, inflexibility.

Okinawa is a place with a fighting tradition.

A history of ferocious resistance.

But it's nothing like what you might think.

Not at all.

This is Okinawa.

Just south of mainland Japan.

For all the relative rigidity of the mainland,

Okinawa answers in its own unique way.

Don't eat the same thing each day. That's boring.

There's even an Okinawan term for it,

"chanpuru," something mixed.

Bits borrowed from all over, served up for anyone to eat.

But maybe you're more familiar with the name, Okinawa,

from this, as the setting

for some of the most horrifyingly bloody battles

of the Second World War. How horrifying?

For the Allies, there were more than 50,000 casualties

with around 12,000 killed or missing in action,

over nearly three months of fighting.

More than 100,000 Japanese soldiers

and Okinawan conscripts were killed defending the island.

Civilians were stuck in the middle of the two armies

and got crushed.

No one will know for sure,

but historians estimate 150,000 men, women, and children

lost their lives during the battle.

What most don't know is that Okinawa had only

become Japan fairly recently.

That to a great extent, Okinawans didn't even consider

themselves really Japanese, or vice versa.

That Okinawans and Japanese considered themselves

to be different ethnicities, spoke two different languages

and culturally, culinarily, and in many other ways

looked in different directions.

Yet, Okinawans were asked to make the ultimate sacrifice,

and they did.

That's not just ancient history.

It informs the present, still.

Okinawa is the largest of over 100 islands

making up the Ryukyu island chain.

It's just over 300 miles from the mainland, but worlds apart.

Okinawa is different.

It's tropical. Clear waters.

Some of the best beaches in Asia,

with a decidedly more laid back, less frenetic,

self-serious attitude than the mainland.

You can feel it. You can see it.

It's just different here.

2,000 pounds of heavily muscled beef enters the arena.

You can feel the ground shake under its heavy hooves.

His opponent awaits.

Togyu, also known as ushi-zumo

sumo, yes, but bull sumo.

These are professionals,

and like Jake LaMotta and Chuck Wepner before them,

they shall live to fight, or do other stuff, another day.

Having shed decidedly less blood than either

of those two gentlemen.

Two animals, two handlers.

And they do, like, the Burgess Meredith job in Rocky.

Like fighters in sumo, the bulls are ranked

by their ability, their record in the ring.

The highest being yokozuna.

This is Kenny Aman. He lives up the road.

Is there a time limit or do they go till somebody gives up?

I think they pretty much go until somebody gives up.

When it gets... -A points system?

No, no, there's no points system.

Basically, when the other one turns around and runs away,

that's the winner.

Few times one bull will actually get around to the side

and actually be able to flip the bull over.

Right. Win, lose or survive? Both?

Once in a while, you'll have injuries,

but most of the time the bulls go home.

They go home to be happy. -They do.

Nobody's turned into steak or cutlets.

No.

Togyu started as early as the 17th century

with farmers pitting bull against bull.

They love it in agricultural communities like this,

so much so that it was briefly banned

in some places because farmers were spending too much time

at the fights and not enough time growing sugarcane.

Like Cus D'Amato and the young Tyson,

their handlers raise these beasts from calves,

caring for them on one hand,

and training them, conditioning them

to be monsters in the ring on the other.

Oh! -Oh!

Yeah. Does one wager on this?

I guess the official answer would be

that gambling's illegal in Japan, but...

Intermission.

Time for a corndog, some funnel cake, curly fries?

No. Better. Much better. Yakitori.

Yes, they have that. But when in Okinawa,

do as the Okinawans do. Yakisoba.

Start with pork belly, as one always should.

Some hacked up sausage, cabbage, carrots,

fry that stuff up on the griddle, add some noodles,

and sauce, soy, mirin, brown sugar, vinegar,

and a bit of sake. Top with seaweed powder,

some pickled ginger garnish, and eat. Now.

Oh, he looks impressive.

Oh, yeah. -Oh, he's ready to go.

This guy I think is going to win this one.

We haven't seen his opponent.

Oh, yeah.

My money's on him.

Pretty decisive winner there.

I'm not accusing anybody of gambling,

but I see some money changing hands.

He can do it, I can do it, goddamn it.

If you're looking for sushi or kaiseki or ramen,

you will, of course, find them in Okinawa.

But what you need to know, what you must know,

is that in Okinawa pork is king.

Okay, they got tofu, too.

Here at Urizun, they do specifically Okinawan food

the Okinawan way.

This is the tofu, which you eat a little at a time.

Is it that strong? -It is a little strong, yeah.

It has, like, a cheese type of texture.

It's good. -Not bad, right?

It is like blue cheese.

Ah, pork belly? -Yes.

Okinawans love pork.

Every part of the magical animal, the pig.

At Urizun, the pork belly is slowly cooked in stock

heavily infused with bonito flakes and awa-bori.

The ears are simmered until tender, thinly sliced

and dressed in rice wine vinaigrette.

And the ribs, after brining in sake and seasonings,

are slowly roasted.

So you grew up in New Jersey.

How did you find your way to Okinawa?

Well, my mom was from here. My dad was in the Navy.

Mm-hm. -He was stationed here.

Met my mom and wound up back in New Jersey

because that's where my dad was from, Paterson.

And I was born and raised there.

The school I went to was predominantly Caucasian kids.

There wasn't many Asian-Americans at all.

Right. -And I always had

this kind of, like, identity complex.

There would be, like, times where people would come

to the house. They'd say, "Oh, where's your mom from?

"- Is she from China?" -Oh, God, right.

Open the refrigerator and there would be some weird food.

"Hey, what's that?" Every time I heard that,

I was like, wow, am I, like, am I different?

So one day my mom says

we're going back to Okinawa on a family trip.

I was 17 years old. -You'd never been

up to that point? -No, but when I got off

the plane, I don't know what it was.

It was like, I'm here, this is my home.

Being able to connect to my heritage, I felt something.

I was like, wow, I belong here.

How about the food? What was in that refrigerator?

Because I know a lot of kids who grew up with that same sort

of uncertainty

when they brought their friends home from school

to their house and opened the refrigerator.

You know, kimchee, or cabbage, or fish sauce.

They were aware of it when they visited their friends.

And they were acutely uncomfortable with it

when their friends came over. Man, have things changed,

as far as attitudes,

pretty much the engine of the new American cuisine,

are kids with childhoods like yours.

I don't mean what's hip, what's the next new thing.

I mean, literally redefining what is American cuisine.

Let's put it this way.

The central irony of this story is that, you know,

your mom would have been, like, hipster hero.

Still another American invasion

in the Pacific. The objective is Okinawa,

one of the ring of island fortresses protecting Japan

300 miles away.

On April 1st, 1945,

a U.S. invasion fleet of nearly 1,500 ships,

a landing force of 182,000 people,

that's 75,000 more than Normandy, approached Okinawa.

What came next was what Okinawans called

a typhoon of steel.

Having island hopped across the Pacific,

Allied forces saw Okinawa as a key base for fleet anchorage,

troop staging and air operations for the final push

into the Japanese mainland and victory.

The fighting was brutal for both sides.

The cost in lives and resources for the Allied forces

was tremendous. And when it was over,

military planners looked at the mainland,

looked at what Okinawa had cost them,

and projected even more appalling losses.

What came next, we all know.