Fujiya

Okinawan zenzai is not the hot red bean soup served everywhere else in Japan under the same name. It is cold: sweetened kintoki beans stewed with brown sugar, buried under a mound of shaved ice, sometimes with mochi. In a climate like this the reversal makes complete sense.

Fujiya's contribution is the ice. Instead of freezing water, it freezes the syrup the beans were cooked in, so that as the shaved ice melts the drink does not thin out — it gets sweeter. The texture is closer to a coarse sorbet than to kakigori. The shop is a small one near Tomari elementary school rather than on the tourist strip, and it opens at eleven and closes at seven, or eight in high summer.