I’m early for dinner, so I ask the taxi driver to drop me a few blocks from my destination, a discreet restaurant in Ishikawa, a sleepy port about two hours north of Naha, Okinawa Prefecture.
Ishikawa sits on the east coast of the narrowest stretch of Okinawa’s main island. As I kill time walking its streets, I pass flat-roofed concrete buildings, pastel paint faded and peeling from walls stained with mold, and traditional houses, weathered shīsā (guardian lions said to ward off evil)) at their gates, with gardens overgrown with weeds, where the crimson flowers of deigo (Indian coral trees) bloom. As I turn into a backstreet, jets from the nearby Kadena Air Base rumble overhead.
Unusually, the restaurant I’m headed to is not listed on Google Maps, but I recognize the three-story weatherboard building I’d seen at the address on Street View: first floor faced with fake stone, the entryway covered in cheap linoleum. Metal letters on the wall spell out the name, “Mauvaise Herbe,” and I know I’ve arrived at the right place.
