Three Nghe people cook Tet cakes in Japan

(Baonghean.vn) - TI had celebrated five Tet holidays in Cambodia in the 80s and two Tet holidays in Japan in the 90s of the last century. But the first time we were able to cook banh chung and banh tet abroad was eight or nine years ago, in 2002 and 2003.

That time, I was admitted to the University of Foreign Languages.Tokyoinvited to come and lecture with quite good conditions. So I brought my wife and two children along. The university rented a fairly large house near the school for us. Around the house there was a garden and we could grow all kinds of vegetables and herbs. Tet 2002, we started to cook banh. I bought banana leaves in Ueno and Japanese sticky rice in the supermarket, and asked an acquaintance in Hanoi to buy and send the string. We still cooked with a gas stove. However, banh wrapped in banana leaves was not green. And cooking with a gas stove required cooking many times, which was not very Tet atmosphere!

The most memorable was Tet 2003. We could cook banh chung with firewood with sticky rice, dong leaves, and giang strings. These were all bought in Vietnam.Maleand then sent it over. There was an acquaintance's family who could bring it over, so my wife asked them to bring a fair amount of dong leaves and giang strings over a week before Tet. The weather in Japan is cold, so it's easy to preserve. Sticky rice is actually available in Japan, but Vietnamese sticky riceMalestill more fragrant. Japanese people are not used to eating fragrant rice. A month before Tet, because I have a friend who exports goods to Japan, I sent 50 kilos of sticky rice along with green beans, dried bamboo shoots, shiitake mushrooms, and pork belly...

So all the most important conditions for cooking were temporarily in place. The only thing left was to have a big pot and cook somewhere. My wife had asked for firewood from a carpentry shop near our house. At first, we planned to rent a pot, but when we looked online, it cost about 5,000 yen for 2 days (nearly 1.5 million VND), and if we cooked with firewood, it was probably not possible because the pot would turn black anyway. Finally, my wife went to a store quite far from home and bought a big pot that could cook about 7-8 kg of sticky rice. Including taxi and train fares, this pot cost 17,000 yen, about 5 million VND now, and it was only for one cooking. We decided to put bricks in the yard to cook. However, to be careful, my wife went to a few neighbors' houses to tell them in advance so they would understand, lest they saw us lighting a fire in the middle of the night and call the police. I also carefully asked some policemen I knew. They said, go ahead, but remember to tell the neighbors so they know. I took a piece of plastic sheet to cover the street side, both to block the wind and to give it a little more privacy.

My wife and I are from Nghe An, we still prefer Banh Tet to Banh Chung. So my wife wrapped both Banh Tet and Banh Chung, and even Banh Tet con for the two boys. My wife asked a friend to buy her a wooden mold to wrap Banh Chung for easier. We lit the fire at around 11am and took out the cakes at 11pm.

During the day, Pham Xuan Nguyen, also an Nghe An native and a literary critic working at the same school where I teach in Japan, and I went to Ueno to buy things to prepare for Tet. Ueno is a place where you can buy all kinds of food to prepare Vietnamese dishes. In the evening, I assigned Pham Xuan Nguyen the task of watching the banh chung pot. At night, it was minus 2 degrees outside, the water in the tap in the yard was frozen and could not flow, so Pham Xuan Nguyen had to carry water from inside the house to mix it. I was busy making the meat jelly, while my wife was wrapping the head cheese.

After a few days of preparation, we had a Vietnamese Tet.Malefor my family and for more than thirty Vietnamese people (mostly students) that we know. I also invited a few Japanese friends who are close to me. There were about fifteen people staying to celebrate New Year's Eve at my house and celebrate Tet until the evening of the first day. Among them was Mr. Le Van Cu, an overseas Vietnamese, PhD in Linguistics, professor at the University ofIbaraki. Until then, having been in Japan for nearly 30 years, married to a Japanese woman, every Vietnamese New Year he "asked his wife's permission" to find a group of Vietnamese people to celebrate Tet together. From his place to my place by train, it took 3 hours. He arrived early and brought along several karaoke video tapes of Vietnamese songs. While waiting for New Year's Eve (in Japan, it's slower than in Vietnam)Male2 hours), he read us the quatrain he wrote about being far from his homeland, I remember when he finished reading, we all exclaimed: "So sad!". Before Tet last year, I emailed him to ask for the exact copy of that poem. He wrote to me: "Before copying the poem "Autumn Winter Kinh" below, I realized that I also needed to borrow some verses of The Lu to express my feelings, during the days of the end of the year and the beginning of Tet here:

Shake off the wind and rain on the attic,

Quietly watching the world welcome Spring.

And this is the poem he read that touched the hearts of those of us far from home at that time:

Winter Autumn

The vast autumn forest of Tokyo,

The Ichô tree is shining in the golden sunshine.

A quarter of a century, still,

Lost in a foreign land, on dry leaves?

(Ichô tree, a type of maple tree with yellow leaves that is very popular in Japan.)

This year, we get to celebrate Tet in our hometown. As for Cu, he will probably find Vietnamese friends to feel like he is in Vietnam.MaleAlthough we were in VietnamMaleWell, I don't know if I'll have time to cook the cakes or not? Or will I just run to the market to buy some pre-boiled cakes to prepare for Tet, like many years ago?!

Hanoi, late 2011

Anh Anh