with a grain of salt



Okinawa Sea Salt



   Last week I went down to Naha with my friend.  We wandered around all the tourist places on Kokusai street.  We spent hours looking at all the glasses and trinkets one could buy.  Some of the stuff is pretty ridiculous.  Japanese people seem to like things that are far from necessary.  Towards the end of our adventure we came across a store that we thought looked like a spice store.  Since we both like to cook we decided to take a look.

   As soon a we walked in you could smell the spices, but it wasn't overpowering like I had expected.  Normally a spice store or market smells so strong its almost unbearable.  But this store was very subdued.  As we started to look around we realized it was a salt store.  An entire store of salt!  I thought it was pretty weird when I realized what the store was, until I started looking around.  Some of the products had English on them or a picture so we could tell what they were.  And you could taste them too.  Seems weird to just eat salt but they were much more then just salt.

   I had never seen so much salt in my life.  They had different types of salts that had spices mixed in like garlic and onion or pepper and lemon.  But then they had some strange things like rose and orchid.  They even had a green tea and sesame one.  It wasn't too bad but I don't know what you would make with it.  They also had salts from all over  the world.  From Europe to the Himalayas.  They even had Merlot salt, which I think I may go back for!