One of the great joys of living in Japan is experiencing the wide range of traditional Japanese pickles, or tsukemono, that are served with every meal.
Growing up on Okinawa, I enjoyed papaya more often as a vegetable than as a fruit. Every once in a while, I would have some of the ripe orange fleshy fruit, but mostly it was ao papaya (blue papaya in Japanese) or green papaya we’d have at home.
