Ishigaki, Okinawa

In the Yaeyama islands — Japan's southwestern edge, closer to Taiwan than to Tokyo — each community holds its own harvest festival in the lunar summer. The ceremonies differ from island to island: Taketomi has its own dances, Hateruma has its own, Kohama and Kuroshima have theirs. Different costumes, different music, different relationships to the cycles being addressed.

Some ceremonies are not open to outside observers at all. None publish fixed dates far in advance — the timing is determined by the lunar calendar and by community consensus. Finding out when a particular island's festival will occur requires asking someone who lives there. Tourists who build an itinerary around it are likely to be disappointed.

These ceremonies are addressed to forces older than tourism, older than the Japanese nation-state, older than the Ryukyu Kingdom. Encountering one — actually being present when a Yaeyama island performs its harvest offering — requires travel that is not about efficiency. It rewards exactly that.

Before the ferry to Taketomi or Iriomote or any of the outer Yaeyama islands, stop at the market. The covered arcade near Ishigaki's public market is where the island chain concentrates its flavors, and understanding those flavors before you travel further changes what you notice when you arrive.

Yaeyama soba noodles are flatter and lighter than Okinawan soba — a distinction that matters to the people who make them. Island tofu is firmer and denser than mainland varieties, surviving without refrigeration for the hours that traveling between islands requires. Sea grapes look implausible and taste precisely like the sea. These things are specific. The specificity is the point.

The vendors have occupied their stalls for years or decades. The market exists for the community that uses it daily. Visitors who arrive in the morning and shop the way locals do — pointing and asking questions — will find it works. The market is the grammar of Yaeyama cuisine. Everything you eat on the outer islands becomes more legible after you have been here first.