In Okinawa, people eat papaya as a vegetable not as a fruit like in Hawaii or other tropical regions. You can find papayas all over Okinawa easily, even on house yards, which actually are good places to grow papaya. How to eat it as a vegetable?

Okinawans harvest papaya before it’s ripe and still green and thick. Then it’s cut into stripes and made into a salad or stir-fried with other vegetables and sometimes canned tuna.

As a joke, Japanese pronounce papaya as “Papaiya,” and “papa” means “daddy” in Japan while “iya” is “dislike.” So “papaiya” can mean “disliked daddy” in Japan.