Welcome to my art gallery of meat cuts 😀 Yep, this is my drawing. Please don’t worry about sharp of ear. This is a pig and not a new type of animal. You can see my poor skill of drawing animals but my kids actually said it is rather good. They were doing some art and drawing rainbows and flowers and this is what I draw. Next time, I will try to do some creative drawing but I thought this could be quite useful to anyone trying to buy some meat at supermarkets! 😉

Pork

1. かた/肩 /kata/ shoulder
2. かたロース/ kata rosu/ shoulder blade
3. ロース /rosu/loin
4. ヒレ /hire / fillet
5. ばら/bara/belly
6. 腿/もも/momo/leg
7. テビチ/tebichi/hand or wrist
8. みみ/耳/mimi/ear
9. お/尾/o/tail

Why pork is so popular in Okinawa?

You might have already noticed pork is a big thing in Okinawa. Kakuni braised pork belly, tebichi braised hock and mimiga ear. A lot of Okinawan signature dishes are made with pork. Around the 16th to 17th century  demand of pork meat increased in order to provide the food to Chinese mission (strip envoys) visited in Okinawa. Okinawa needed to provide food to 400 envoys for 250 days. The strip envoys consumed 20 pigs a day along with other food. During this 250 days total, over 5000 pigs were consumed.

This is very unique compare to main land Japan. Because main land Japan was having the isolationist foreign policy around this time under Tokugawa shogunate. So when main land Japan was trying to ignore outside Japan, Ryukyu Kingdom was actively involved with trade with China.