goyablog

So what’s with this “goya” stuff? Well, first of all, technically it’s gôyâ or gouyaa (long-o and long-a), but that’s aesthetically unpleasing. It looks better with the long vowels in katakana: ゴーヤー. I’ll keep it to goya as long as you don’t mistake it for the artist or the food company. It has no relation to those. Rather, it is, in English, a “bitter melon.” “Goya” is the Okinawan name for it. In standard Japanese it’s nigauri (苦瓜). In Chinese it’s kugua (same characters). It’s cucumber-shaped (see site logo and the goya photo set under goyapix), but bumpy and it is BITTER, BUT GOOD FOR YOU. You have to prepare it properly or you’ll hate its bitterness; some people will still hate it. But it is chock-full of vitamins, especially C.

Goya has become associated with Okinawa through the stir-fry dish goya champuru and through clever marketing after a character in the popular Okinawa-based NHK Morning Drama “Churasan” (originally aired April-September, 2001) created a “Goyaman” keychain fob. For the record, I adopted goya as my avatar long before “Goyaman” was invented and before goya became mainstream popular and turned into plush toys. I’ve had “goyaboy@mac.com” ever since Dot Mac (now MobileMe) began and because of that I’ll probably keep paying my $100/year to Apple even though I use it less (I’ve been googlized). Flickr-friend Donna on champuru.net has a nice write-up on goya, along with a champuru recipe. Check it out.

Now, that still doesn’t explain my fascination/fixation/obsession with goya. It’s not just for its phallic qualities. Rather, it’s something I latched onto while doing research in Okinawa as an odd thing to latch onto. The inaugural post on the original goyablog (February 22, 2004) goes through this same explanation. That iteration, done with iBlog (does anyone remember that software?) lasted almost a year until I discovered WordPress and started goyablog II on January 1, 2005. After 900+ entries on it during the past 4+ years, I decided on beginning anew with the third iteration of goyablog. For the record, I changed the template of goyablog II at least once, but maintained the same site and database. Goyablog III represents an entirely fresh start and a fresh look. What prompted this change was the sudden corruption (it seems) of some files on goyablog II which results in “Bad Requests” when you try to leave a comment or go to a post’s permalink. I couldn’t fix the problem so I decided to start with a fresh install of WP. This was a good decision because I was behind on upgrades and my installation of WP had gotten grossly hybridized.

Being too lazy and not code-worthy to create a template design from scratch, I’ve adapted one called “b-side” by a French graphic designer named Brieuc de la Fournière, aka ieub. I basically turned it all green and changed some fonts, font sizes, and styles. And of course added the goya graphic to the header. So, please enjoy goya and goyablog, both are bitter, but good for you….