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The Vegans of Okinawa
Veganism gains ground on the island in Japan where Spam has reigned supreme since U.S. occupation
Metal trays clatter, breaking the Saturday afternoon lull. Inside a small concrete building in suburban Okinawa, two kittens snooze in a scratched-up armchair. Meows can be heard from the kitchen, where several cats are picked up and herded out in preparation for dinner. I’m at Gub Gub’s Vegan Kitchen — just don’t call it a restaurant, lest you provoke the owner.
“It’s a small gritty place that serves food, a canteen,” explains Tetsuro Nishi, flashing a smile that sends ripples across his tanned forehead, a bun of long, glossy hair nodding in agreement. Nishi has run Gub Gub’s on this subtropical Japanese island for the past four years. He favors grit over polish, intimacy over formality. That ethos pervades at Gub Gub’s, a place where “you don’t have to be dressed up, because you’ll be covered in cat hair anyway.”
Named for a talking pig from the menagerie in Dr. Dolittle’s book series, Gub Gub’s is located on a narrow sideroad in a residential neighborhood and housed in one of Okinawa’s typical typhoon-proof concrete structures, once home to a convenience store. It sells unfussy and deeply satisfying vegan burgers. The “Dolittle Cheeseburger Combo” is a warm amalgam of melty vegan cheese and chewy vegan meat inside a crisp bun. Its price includes a “little donation to animal rescue groups in Okinawa.” Inside Gub Gub’s walls, Nishi seeks to convert the uninitiated, create a haven for vegan and vegetarian customers, and provide a home for a rotating cast of motley strays (their ranks have included 11 cats, two dogs, two birds, a turtle, and a rat — all vegan). Gub Gub’s is an embodiment of Nishi’s values.
“I smoke and I drink lots of booze,” he says, laughing, “I just disagree that you need to kill to survive.”
It’s a tough mantra to swallow in a place where locals are said to consume “every…
