This year, I keep writing about Vietnam as my graduation thesis, especially, I will research about Educationsystem of Vietnam. I met a lot of intelligent Vietnamese people here, so I want to know how they study and why they study so hard. Because of Tomei's recommendation, I will focus on students who studey Korean and English as their majors at a foreign university in Hue. I am really interested in Vietnamese students' foreign language skill, so I need to work on it hard now.
When my mom went to Hakataza Theatre to see a musical, Miss Saigon, she bought a packed pho with soup and Nuch cham for 500 yen there.
That's why my mom and I managed to cook it.(> <)
I have had Pho for 3 times; the first one was in Tokyo, the second one was in Kumamoto and the third one was in Fukuoka.
My mom has never had pho, so I told her what kinds of ingredients we need to put in it. We finally put chicken, bean sprout and welsh onion. I was happy that the pho looked like phos I have had before.:) I like pho after udon and dandan noodle because it is very tasty and healthy!!
Yesterday I got 2 Vietnamese candies from Mr.Tomei at the 3 rd period. He went to Hue, Vietnam for 5 days to research something, so he gave me the candies as souvenirs.
The candy was really mysterious.
Apparently, its taste was Durian, Pineapple and Coconut.
Half of the candy was colored light green, half was the color of peanut butter.
I tried the candy, and its taste was much better than I had expected. In the box, the three flavors were written in Japanese, but I didn't notice that it had a Pineapple taste. There were also no word for "Pineapple" in English.
Last year, I also had a Vietnamese candy from Mr. Tomei.
The candy was also light green, looked unhealthy. I wonder what ingredient has that color. Is it Coconut!?
To tell the truth, I can't say that I like Vietnamese candy, however, it is an interesting challenge to eat them because they are different from Japanese. I want to eat real Durian and Coconut in the Southeast Asia someday!!
I also got a candy box from him, too.
There are 4 languages, Vietnamese, English, Chinese and Japanese, written on the box. Interestingly, I found a few mistakes in the Japanese. (^ o ^)
Anyway, I am happy to see Japanese written on the Vietnamese box, so if I travel to Vietnam in the future, I want to find things which have Japanese written on them. I heard Mr. Tomei spent only 6000 yen (＄60） for 5 days in Hue, so Vietnam is still a very cheap country to travel!!! (> 0 <)
On June 7 th, I visited Ms. Huong, who is a Vietnamese student at Kuamoto University. She invited me to her house in the evening at 7 pm.
I got to know her through Mr. Umeda, and we had exchanged mails before I met her at the first time. Luckily, she lives near my house, so I can get there within 5 minutes. I realized I always go past her house when I go to school.:)
When I visited her house, I met her husband, Nam and her daughter, Khoe, too. I was very glad that they welcomed me kindly and warm heartily. They served me Vietnamese snacks. They were a mysterious taste!! I thought the taste was something like Chocolate, but I am not sure what they were.
Their daughter, Khoe was really cute and interesting. She can speak both Japanese and Vietnamese. Interestingly, she spoke Japanese in a Kumamoto dialect. That's why her parents sometimes didn't understand when she talked to me in Japanese. I was glad that she was not shy and tried to talk with me a lot. We played with clay together. She likes to have photo taken, so I took lots of photos of her. When I showed her my digital camera, she posed for it.
I learned how to pronunce Vietnamese and about Vietnamese affairs from Huong and Nam. I pronunced "Khoe Khong" again and again.(> <) It means "How are you" in Vietnamese, but Kh is really difficult to for me to pronunce. I am still poor at speaking Vietnamese, but I will improve my Vietnamese soon to communicate with more Vietnamese!!I was also amazed at the Vienamese hair cut prices. She said " You can have your hair cut for 30 yen (about 30 us￠) with massage in Vietnam" Since I heard that, I would love to have my hair cut in Vietnam!
Anyway, I had a good time with them. Maybe I stayed there from 7 to over 10 pm. Khoe had to sleep at 9:30 pm, but she didn't want to sleep at that time. She stayed awake until I left and saw me off. I was very happy to her. In fact, I left my drawing and some message at her desk secretly.I wanna visit them and play with Khoe again!! I hope I can go to my grandmother and cook Pho with them!! Next time I will visit them with Trang!!!!!! (> 0 <)
On May 17 th, I had a Spring roll party at my grandmother's house.
My Vietnamese friend, Trang , visited her to cook Spring roll because she wanted to thank her for being a host family for her friend. She brought some ingredients for the Vietnamese spring rolls. Trang's spring roll contained rice paper, pork, Welish onion, Judas's-ear, carrot, cellophane noodles and eggs. We started to cook together at 7 pm.
At first, Trang cut Welish onion, carrot, Judas's -ear and cellophane noodles, and she put them into a ball. She also added pork, eggs, the salt and the fish sauce, nuoc cham with it, and mixed them round.
In fact, she realized pork was lacking when she was mixing, so we went to the super market to get more pork and left the food until we came back.
We took a long time to find.><
Next, we wrapped the filling around rice paper. My sister soaked rice paper with water, but then she ruined some. Trang taught us how to wrap them。 She can wrap them very well,but neither I nor my sister were good at wrapping.
However, we enjoyed wrapping, and my grandmother tried to do, too! My sister tried to wrap them into a thinly rolled piece of dough,too and it made Trang laugh.
I want to try to wrap them again!!
Then, Trang deep-fried them. I helped her a little, by that I mean, I just brought a flying pan. I preferred taking photos instead cooking.
Trang sometimes got angry with me because I just took photos instead of helping her. I couldn't help taking photos because I wanted to make a nice post about the cooking. Anyway, we made a lot of spring rolls. Maybe, there were about 30 spring rolls. 30 was enough for 5 people.:)
Finally, she finished deep-friying them. She also stared to make basting for them, and then she added the sugar and nuoc cham with hot water, which she brought from Vietnam.
After that, we sat them on the table. It was nearly 9 pm when we started to have dinner. We took a long time to cook. It was about 2 hours!?(> <)
Trang's spring rolls were really tasty. I had 8 spring rolls at least, and my grandmother must have eaten 6. I ate too much and my stomach hurt later.
We presented some to my father's friend, Yamabe-san. According to him, they were delicious. My grandmother cooked pan-fried dumplings at the same time, but they were unpopular among us.
My American host mother can cook spring rolls well, and her spring rolls are different from Trang's. Anyway I like both of spring rolls.
Spring roll is called Nem ran in Vietnamese!!
I am not good at cooking, but I think I can cook spring rolls by myself next time. It was not difficult to cook to me. Next time I want to learn how to cook Pho from her.:)
There are more 87 million Vietnamese people in the world today.
Vietnamese is the 13 th most populous country in the world. I was surprised that there are more Vietnamese people in the world than I had expected. It ranks lower when compared to Japan, which is 10th.
Vietnamese are also referred to as "Kinh"(京人） or "Viet", and make up over 86% of the population. There are more than 54 ethnic minorities in Vietnam.
That's why there are several languages besides the offcial language, Vietnamese. Chinese, Khmer and Russian are also spoken. Recently, Englih is becoming popular as a second language. I heard Japense is also becoming popular among students as well. There are also several religions in Vietnam, 85% of people belive Buddhism and rest of them do Christianity, Caodaism and others.
My opinion of the Vietnamese people is that they have large eyes with double-edged eyelid and noses. All the Vietnamese people I have ever met were slender and smart. Some seem to look like Chinese or Japanese, but it is no wonder since Vietnam is bordered by China. However, I have met very few Vietnamese people in my life, so my opinion probably doesn't say much. I should meet many Vietnamese!!
Recently, many Vietnamese people have immigrated to Australia or other countries like America, China and Taiwan, and they build their own society there. Of course, there are Vietnamese people in Japan, but their pooulation here is smaller than other countries. According to my research, many Vietnamese poeple marry Taiwanese people. I expect more Vietnamese to come to Japan and marry Japanese people in the future.:)
On May 5 th morning, I waked up at 7 am to see Dung off. He would go to Nagoya to visit his friend, so he had to arrive at the Kumamoto station by 8:30. Sadly, I was too sleepy to talk with him.:( My grandmother, Trang and I went to the station with him by a bus. When we arrived there, we didn't have much time to talk. We took some photos of both of us together and said good-bye before his train left. We touched each other's hands, and it was our final good-bye. Dung was very kind and a gentleman. He always cared about ladies first, and it made me surprised. I honestly though that he didn't look like Vietnamese. He looked like Chinese or Japanese more than Vietnamese. Interestingly, Trang called him "Ojiisan" (means very old guy in Japanese) because he is 7 years older than us. Anyway, it was nice to meet him. Now we can keep in touch with him often, but we all always miss him. Hen gap lai, Anh!
On May 4 th, I went out with my sister, Trang and Dung from 9 am. That day was really hot. > <
At first, we dropped in the Fujisaki Shrine to pray and some shops to buy rice paper on the way to the Kuamoto castle. We managed to get rice paper and we also had ice cream. :)
Next, we arrived at the Kumamoto castle. We toured the Honmaru-Goten, was opened on April 20th and the inside of the castle. We reached on the top floor of the castle. There were many people so that we had to wait so long time to look on. However, we were lucky that we didn't have to wait more one hour.
After visiting there, we went out for lunch with my father. Trang and Dung wanted to eat Kumamoto rame, so my father took them to Daikoku ramen, which is our favorite ramen restaurant by his car. Dung seemed to like it, but it didn't suit Trang's taste. My father also took them to Foodpal-Kumamoto. We had sweet time there.
We also drove to the Shichijyo Melondome, Yatani Valley and Yamaga city.
At the Shichijyo Melondome, Dung bought two pieces of melon cake for my grandmother. They looked yummy!!
In Yatani Valley, we enjoyed watching a small catract and touching the water. The water was so cool!! There are a lot of natures, so Trang liked there and tried to take out the water with a plastic bottle. :)
In Yamaga city, we went to the Yachiyoza. The stodgy street looks like Kyoto, so I believe many foreigners like there. We also sank to our knees in a historic footbath there. The water was not so hot and we could relax a little!
That night we had a small grilled beef party at my grandmother house. We went shopping at a Hirose for that.
To my sadly, Trang couldn't join us. :( However, we my family and Dung enjoyed eating and drinking. I didn't sleep the previous night, so I got drunk fairly quickly. I only drank half a can of alchol and I felt dizzy straight away.> < The foods was not so gorgeous, but it was really good time for me.
After dinner, my family made a stamp for Dung. It is easy to make one because my family runs a stamp shop at my grandmom's house. I was happy that I could give a Japanese present to him. I wanted to something connected with Kumamoto, but I didn't have much time to prepare.
That day was last day to stay at my grandmom's house. I felt it was really short visit. In fact, I wanted to talk with him and learn about Vietnam more. I also wanted to cook Vietnamese foods together. I want him to be a visitor of my house again. My family always talk about him, so if he visits us again, we will show him more places around Kumamoto than this time.
Last Golden week, we my family welcomed a boy from Vietnam into my grandmother's house. He was Trang's friend, Dung who works in Tokyo. He tried hard to reserve hotels, only to fail. That's why we decided to host him for two nights. My grandmother lives alone in a three story house. She had enough space to have him stay.
On May 3 rd, he arrived in Kumamoto and went to KGU exchange students' dorm with Trang. We my family were looking forward to see him and waited for a long time, but they spent most of the day at the dorm. When they visited my grandmother, it was over 10 o'clock. (>-<) It was late time, but we enjoyed chatting and playing UNO at her house.
He can speak Japanese well, but my grandmother spoke Japanese in Kumamoto dialect too much and speedy.
Last year I studied how to teach Japanese to foreigners, so I tried to help him with Japanese.
I was glad that my grandmother accepted him. To tell the truth, I have longed to be a host family for foreigners.:) However, this time was really short for me. I wanted to take him more many places in Kumamoto.If it is possible, I wanna be a host family again!!
Vietnam, a country located in Southeast Asia and bordered by China, Laos and Cambodia, is a country with many cultures and a long history.
Vietnam is about 331,690 square kilometers in area and it is the 65th biggest contry in the world. The three fourths of Vietnam is intermountain area. The Mekong, one of the world's major rivers, runs through Vietnam.
Vietnam consists of North part, Middle part and South part. Vieatnam is divided into 59 province and 5 centally controlled municipalities, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, Da Nang, Haiphong and Can Tho.
The capital of Vietnam is Hanoi in North part and the largest city of Vietnam is Ho Chi Minh in South part.
Compared to Japan, the size of Vietnam is similar. Japan is more 337,000 square kilometers and it is the 60th biggest country in the world. The two-thrids of Japan is intermountain area. It is intersting to compare the diffrence between Vietnam and Japan. :)
I enjoy your blog and effort you put into it! Continue exploring that wonderful culture :) read more
on The Vietnamese people