Okinawan sea salt

Nishisato Nagaharu set up the Miyako company behind Yukishio in 1994 as a landscaping business. He drilled wells into the island's rock for salty groundwater that has filtered through Ryukyu limestone, and he dried it with machinery bought for sugarcane processing, which produced a salt as fine as powder. The company says it keeps everything in the seawater, the bitter nigari included. The Yukishio Museum next to the factory in Karimata reopened after renovation in August 2015, and the salt turns up in Nanpudo's Yukishio Chinsuko and in Rikko Gelato's ice cream in Hirara.

Nuchi Masu takes its name from the Okinawan nuchi (life) and maasu (salt). The company makes it only from seawater drawn at Miyagi-jima, with no imported salt or additives, and it says the salt is about 25% lower in salt content than ordinary table salt and contains 21 kinds of marine components. The factory is called Nuchi Unaa, and the walk out to the Kafu Banta lookout starts there. It opens every day of the year for tours and lunch at Restaurant Takahanari upstairs, and in a typhoon the bridge to the island closes and so does the factory.