As with last week's episode — filmed in Marseille, France — this week's episode of the CNN travelogue Parts Unknown focuses on yet-another region that's an outsider within its own country. Only this time, instead of indulging his florid, quippy bromance with Eric Ripert, host Anthony Bourdain tackles the violent history of Okinawa, the Japanese island, where "some of the most horrifying and bloody battles of the Second World War" took place. This fraught history — and the ensuing years of foreign military occupation — strongly "informs the present" of the island, as evidenced by its Western-food-mashups (taco rice), its strong martial arts culture (karate masters reign supreme), and the episode's opening sequences, which emphasize Okinawa's "fighting tradition."
"For all the reverent rigidity of the mainland, Okinawa answers in its own unique way: Don’t eat the same thing each day."
According to Bourdain, Okinawa's staggering sacrifice during WWII comes as a major irony, considering that locals often see themselves as distinctly separate from the Japanese mainland. "Okinawans didn't really consider themselves Japanese; or vice versa," Bourdain says, noting that Okinawans and mainlanders "culturally, culinarily, and in many other ways, looked in different directions." Throughout, Bourdain praises the laid-back nature of the island, from its back-alley bars to its "more multicultural" influences. But the shadow of conflict always looms in the background — or, when Bourdain's busy getting dropped by "Okinawan sumo" wrestlers, it's front-and-center.
Here now, the 18 best quips from Bourdain's trip to Okinawa:
1) On the Okinawan philosophy: "For all the reverent 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.'"
2) On bullfighting, which pits two animals against each other: "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."
3) On a merciful fate for the losers: "Nobody's turned into steak or cutlets."
4) On how first-generation Americans are informing food, to an (oddly) unnamed half-Japanese, half-American local: "Man, have things changed as far as attitudes: Pretty much the engine of the new American cuisine are kids with childhoods like yours. And I don't mean what's the next big thing. I mean literally re-defining what is American cuisine."
5) On how perceptions change, to the same man: "The central irony of this story is that your mom would have been the hipster hero of New Jersey now."
6) On karate master Tetsuhiro Hokama's famous dojo: "People come from all over the world to study at his dojo. And the training they get is hard. fucking. core."
7) On makiwara, a shockingly painful training exercise: "The idea is to repeatedly cause micro-fractures to the bones to build up stronger, larger, more protective deposits — basically weaponizing even your weakest and smallest extremities. They call it makiwara. And it hurts even to watch."
8) On the best way to prep a lobster: "Because — one must! — [eat it] served raw and still twitching in the shell."
9) On getting schooled by a 71-year-old karate master: "The demonstration for Hokama-sensei's open-hand kyushu technique becomes... a little too real for my taste."
10) On his own fighting skills: "All I know how to do in this situation, by the way, is pull guard and look for something to choke or lock."
11) On crying uncle: "Nope, apparently they don't know what 'tapping out' means here, because I was tapping like Western Goddamn Union."
12) On the uniquely Okiwanan invention known as taco rice: "This unholy, greasy, starchy, probably really unhealthy delight, a booze-mop-turned-classic, caught on big time."
13) On Okinawa's potential as a tourist hotspot: "Which is worse? Chinese tourists, or American marines?"
14) On shameful old habits: "I've given up many vices in my life; many shameful, filthy, guilty pleasures that I used to like that I just don't do anymore. Cocaine, heroin, prostitutes, the musical stylings of Steven Tyler."
15) On his one true vice: "But there's... one thing that still has an unholy grip on me. For no reason I can gather, it's the convenience store, formerly of near-Akron, Ohio, that mutated into a massive Japanese chain. Behold, the wonder that is Lawson. What exactly about this place has its tentacles so deep into my heart and my soul?"
16) On the scene at Bar Dojo: "Where some of the island's most esteemed masters and their students come for what is recognized internationally as the cure for all martial arts related ailments: alcohol."
17) On karate masters boozing it up: "Should you people be drinking? Where is the point of diminishing returns?"
18) On eating horse: "Sashimi of, well — let's just say it's an animal you like."