On Okinawa and other random stuff

A Japanese baker has been singing opera to his bread to make it rise deliciously for 10 years. He used to play a CD, but live singing moves the young loaves more.

In an average life-span of 80 years, you would have grown 11 - 14 metres of hair on your head, 8 - 10 metres of facial hair if you were male, and 3 metres worth of fingernails. Awesome!

And now some facts about Okinawa:

Okinawans consume the most tofu in all of Japan, but interestingly enough, the least ice cream. Apparently, the higher temperatures make ice cream melt too fast to be eaten with relish.

Beef bowl shops in Okinawa consider goya gyuu-don (beef rice with bittergourd on top) as the standard beef bowl. Meanwhile, the standard zenzai (red bean soup with mochi in it) in Okinawa comes with shaved ice, looking more like kakigori (Japanese version of ice kacang) instead. If you want the zenzai served in the rest of Japan, you'll have to specify that you want it hot.

In a shopping street in Okinawa, three obachans (middle-aged ladies) who work in various stalls there have formed a rather popular singing group known as the "Bijin Singers" (Beautiful Singers) or the "Oba Rappers" (Middle-Aged Lady Rappers). They wear over-the-top makeup involving red circles on their cheeks, and sing into cucumber, daikon (radish) and one-other-mike-shaped-vegetable mikes. Hot stuff.

Ijyou desu!