A Certain 🎃 Ghost-Type 👻 Bidoof's Multi-Language Study Log 🇯🇵 🇩🇪 🇨🇦 🇵🇱

[GolyBidoof]

@mitrac

And lately when you post and I look at the time I’m thinking when do you sleep?!

Working days: around 1:30 to 2am?
Days off: 3am or when it starts getting bright outside, most of the time, why would I change it for the holidays

My mom is the same though ^^
But today we’re in a bit of a hurry, so earlier update ^^

@mitrac

Wow I’ve gone from being only vaguely aware of Donki to seeing shops in several countries and now some epic bath bomb because of you

They are also in Singapore as well, will be a thematic device to finish this trip too xdd

@prath

hope you’re also getting good rest!

waking up in 5 hours btw xdd

September 16th, 2025

• 143 reviews on WaniKani
• 15 lessons on WaniKani
• 23 reviews on Bunpro
• 3 stories on Satori Reader
• Random: 深圳 & 香港

From tomorrow on I won’t be able to put in “looking around the street” as language study, as it’s the last day of Chinese characters, either traditional or simplified, so goodnight kanji xdd

Tomorrow’s WaniKani block looks disgusting again:

on the upside though, I should be level 52 tomorrow, so we’re not that far away ^^

---

Life

Shenzhen, China!

See, I knew it was a city that was built rapidly quickly, what I didn’t know is that only certain parts of it are ready yet and you need to make sure you travel to the exact pieces that have been finished yet xdd

So bits and pieces of trivia I learned today:

• China alters its coordinates on maps with GPS by random offsets so that if you attempt to use an app that’s not certified, it’ll just show you float on top of a river or be a few kilometers away from your station (i’m so not used to using Amap ;_; xdd)
• China is going cashless. Which is terrible news, as in order to use Alipay or something, you need to give in your phone number to validate. My phone number has been turned off two weeks ago and I’m not risking crazy high fees on every text message I receive xdd
• Chinese tourist strategy in Shenzhen is very heavily focused on stuff like RedNote, much less so on international tourism: English is almost non-existent aside from metro, people will always make a funny face at you and draw complete blank even when you say something like “how much” or “food where” at them xddd

Still in Hong Kong though…

The train from Hong Kong to Shenzhen is really fast, but the immigration procedures suck, you get your luggage scanned twice, your passport read at least three times, you need to file in a paper and both leave Hong Kong and arrive in China in terms of immigration

It takes something like 30-40 minutes before boarding the train

Yes, the train station West Kowloon in Hong Kong is gigantic xddd

Aaand here we are! Mainland China!

Unfortunately, all of the machines are QR-code only, at least the metro machines aren’t yet

So fun thing, even though Shenzhen metro only opened 20 years ago, it already is the fifth biggest metro network on the planet, and it’s HUGE

And then you go out, and… scooters. Everyone uses scooters xdd
At least not gasoline ones in Thailand, but electric ones for sure ^^

Everything strictly under construction, there were spots on the Chinese maps that were just, empty buildings, and I was wondering what were those… buildings that haven’t been finished yet, but will be next year xddd

We saw the Guiwan Park, which is really beautiful, and has a lot of greenery… but it’s very empty xdd

It doesn’t even show up on Google Maps at all, Google Maps just has a car road over it, so I assume it only got opened really recently ^^

And then, big city!

Our snafu with cash payment number one, trying to order coffee without Alipay xddd

Basically, the only reference to Japanese language I could actually find xddd

Well, except for Akatsuki game parlor and Initial D chinese game xddd

We found a really pretty shopping mall called OH BAY, it really sounds like “obey” in my head and I don’t know why xdd

One absolutely wild bookstore in this shopping mall, this one is on Google Maps actually xdd

And, manhua, I just wish it wasn’t so heavy, I didn’t end up getting it just for weight concerns alone

Off to the government district…

And, food! Oysters and beef!

Ahhh so pretty

So yeah, that was our short day trip to Shenzhen, tomorrow we fly to Hanoi, Vietnam in the morning, so look forward to tomorrow’s update as well ^^

Random shots…

And see you tomorrow from Vietnam! C:

[taiyousea]

@GolyBidoof

Well, except for Akatsuki game parlor and Initial D chinese game xddd

incredible juxtaposition of vibes, i’m obsessed

Amegakure (Unreal Engine 5 Cinematic - 4k)

[trunklayer]

@GolyBidoof

Initial D chinese game

Japanese bus driver drifts (GAS GAS GAS)

Anyway may none of us ever experience riding on a bus with such a crazy driver – not in real life

And, as always, thank you for sharing!

[SpiderWeb]

My information here comes from a YouTube comment so take it with a grain of salt but this video of a bus going down that road in Japan was sped up and the Chinese audio taken from another source to make it seem faster and scarier, then the initial d music was added to make it a funny meme video. The Chinese audio is real but it was from another incident where I think the bus driver was having a seizure or losing consciousness while driving. Which is still scary but it’s a different setting completely.

[Shannon-8]

Ah, Bidoofさん
How are you and your mother in such great physical shape to walk walk walk all day long? Wow!
I see that I am not mentally ready for travel to China
I would have to have a fully Chinese phone so they can see where I am at all times with the apps just to find my way around or buy a coffee
… Surprising but also makes sense
Like those flags…
Wow, I didn’t know it was even possible to make such short stays on a long trip from place to place.
You DO know how to ramble through a city and take its pulse in the daytime and the nighttime

Thank you for the photo tour
WoW

[GolyBidoof]

@Shannon-8

How are you and your mother in such great physical shape to walk walk walk all day long?

I think stopping in cafes when we feel tired, doomscrolling the internet there and building up energy to keep going is the tip xddd

@Shannon-8

I see that I am not mentally ready for travel to China
I would have to have a fully Chinese phone so they can see where I am at all times with the apps just to find my way around or buy a coffee

Most of the necessary apps are available on western devices without workarounds as well, but the fact you can’t just pop in Google Maps and Facebook Messenger and Revolut/N26 really does hinder the experience considering you can use them literally everywhere else

@Shannon-8

Wow, I didn’t know it was even possible to make such short stays on a long trip from place to place.

It gives you a ton of ideas for any potential sequels, when you make targetted holidays for 2 weeks, then you mostly know what you want to see over that time and you finish the story within two weeks, when you go from one place to another, you’RE JUST FILLED WITH UNIVERSAL REGRET EVERYWHERE and you always think “ah yeah, I wish we had one day in Busan”, or “I wish I could take my mom to Dotonbori”, or something, so it keeps your brain wanting more ^^

@SpiderWeb

The Chinese audio is real but it was from another incident where I think the bus driver was having a seizure or losing consciousness while driving. Which is still scary but it’s a different setting completely.

Just in case, China is a big country and I’m sure things like that happen in the less developed regions, but right now China is putting this face of being a hypermodern and hyperadvanced society and they have enough qualities to back it up in many places, so the stereotypes might already be outdated, and if not, they will become really soon
I don’t know if I’m looking forward to that or I’m scared of that xddd

@taiyousea

incredible juxtaposition of vibes, i’m obsessed

omg those videos xddd

September 17th, 2025

• 216 reviews on WaniKani
• 18 lessons on WaniKani
• 15 reviews on Bunpro
• 3 stories on Satori Reader
• Book: 41% of the third chapter of 響け！ ユーフォニアム 北宇治高校吹奏楽部へようこそ, 56% of the whole book

Nope, I don’t think I can justify putting Hanoi in my “learning Japanese” section xdd

Aside from that, LEVEL 52 :DDD

Because of the trip I’m having right now, my accuracy is dropping bit by bit, and my review blocks grow longer and longer, 216 today was a true pain

And in Hibike, I didn’t read it on the plane (I desperately needed sleep), so only one screen on ttsu, and one expression got my interest: 視線を落とした ^^

Genuinely looking for a way to make learning Japanese my low energy activity, but so far, it’s nowhere close to being there, I’ll keep on pushing myself to do so.

---

Life

Hanoi, Vietnam!

There’s a pretty cool story about this picture later in the log, so stay tuned!

They had a Gordon Ramsay restaurant at the airport today

I got myself a drink based on sparkling water there, and eee, it tasted like a regular drink based on sparkling water, Gordon Ramsay didn’t innovate on that one xdd

As soon as you arrive at the airport in Hanoi, you get greeted with a ton of red flags with either the yellow Vietnam star, or, eee… SICKLE AND HAMMER???

…and those symbols are EVERYWHERE in the city xdd
Congratulations to Vietnam for overthrowing their American dictatorship or something…? xddd

Traffic in Hanoi is unbelievable, as I later found out, it’s one of the most polluted cities in the whole world, and the only way to cross the road is just to enter the street and keep going and don’t stop xdd

…so this is how my handheld camera is capturing the monsoon, if I don’t have to worry about the camera being flooded xdd
Over the course of an hour, Google Weather forecast went from 6mm of rain to 14mm of rain, even though they didn’t claim it’d be that bad xdd

We gazed at the rain as we ate some Vietnamese spring rolls and had some Vietnamese Egg Coffee, omnomnom C:

By the way, tangent, Dong as a currency is so weak that you count it in millions, and what you see here on this table costed 170k dong, oof, that’s a big number

A lot of monuments in Hanoi are based around the idea of rebellion or local beliefs, so here’s what you can expect from it ^^

Also, somebody left a Nett hier! I also left mine later ^^

And two things: I noticed that there’s a lot of vegetarian places in Hanoi in comparison to the other places we’ve visited, and suspiciously enough, I really have a feeling that Vietnam is much better developed than it looks on the surface, that looking a bit worse developed is just an aesthetic for them…?

Post of Vietnam building! Globalized by DHL though ^^

One of the tourist attractions in Hanoi is the train road going through the middle of the city that has an actual train going through it, if the origins track right, they’ve only started building cafes around it something like 6 years ago, and they made it into a huge Instagrammable spot

And today’s meal, pho soup and fried rice with egg C:

So we grabbed a seat and waited…

Here’s where the story starts: I only heard about this train road from one of my favorite people on the internet, Tom Scott’s Lateral podcast, where there was a puzzle about this item:

a bottle cap from the “cheapest beer in the world”, that is being put on the railroad before the train arrives

There are three warnings before the train comes, and the road with the cafes has the name of one of the most dangerous streets in Hanoi, DESPITE being a very traffic dangerous city already

Reason being, a LITERAL PASSENGER TRAIN IS FLYING SOMETHING LIKE ONE FEET AWAY FROM YOUR FACE

My mom slipped when the gust of wind went through and she almost kicked the chair she was sitting on into the train, this is how close it gets from things happening

And after the train going through the street, people cheer, pay for their orders…
…and take their bottle caps, that have been squashed by the train, making it one of the most original souvenirs you can get ^^

The biggest night market in Hanoi is only open on the weekends, but it didn’t prevent us from walking to where it takes place anyway ^^

And on the note of Vietnam aestheticizing being underdeveloped,

I swear xdddd

Also, people in conical hats carrying fruits everywhere!

And there’s badminton playing fields everywhere too! Love how blurry those two turned out ^^

We’re staying in Vietnam for a few more days, might be the longest place for us to stay in, so I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more adventures I can share with you ^^

Until then, take care and I hope for 9 hours of sleep before tomorrow, to be able to get my lungs to filter out the PM2.5 particles

I hope my lungs recover quickly after Hanoi xddd

[rentalfish]

Wilddd to see that you r in my city :D.

For some context, like ~2 weeks ago was our 80 years of independence celebration so the flags were everywhere, and in a lot of places I supposed they just left it for decoration.

As for whether Vietnam is more developed than it seems or not, since you would be staying for a few days I think it would be nice to experience and see how things are around here xD.

And yes, the air is bad.

Hope you had a good time and have a good sleep tonight. The itinerary is so extremely busy, I’m amazed that you study so consistently.

[SpiderWeb]

Ooh, I can sort of comment on this. It’s a different city but I know someone who went to Vietnam about a year ago. They were in Saigon I think so it’s not the same as Hanoi. It was for a business trip and apparently being in Vietnam was alright but the circumstances of the trip were pretty bad because of how long the flight was and it was something they couldn’t refuse for business reasons. Lots of cool restaurants and book shops in Saigon because it’s common to open a test store there before franchising globally.

[mitrac]

@GolyBidoof

Here’s where the story starts: I only heard about this train road from one of my favorite people on the internet, Tom Scott’s Lateral podcast, where there was a puzzle about this item:

Ooh I saw a documentary about that you’re there! I didn’t know about the bottlecap idea, very snazzy omiyage

[GolyBidoof]

September 18th, 2025

• 168 reviews on WaniKani
• 18 lessons on WaniKani
• 26 reviews on Bunpro
• 3 stories on Satori Reader
• Manga: 私の百合はお仕事です！第１２章

I bought the third volume of Yuri is my Job! in the Book-Off in Ikebukuro and today tried reading in a bathtub, and it got SLIIIGHTLY wet, but yeah, moving slowly.

I’ve fallen out of the understanding trend once again and it’s pretty hard to read again, but not only when they’re performing, also when they’re just talking to one another, so I need to stay mindful of the difficulty

also, today was a HORRIBLE day on Bunpro
I have no idea what happened, but I just couldn’t remember a ton of the grammars, possibly the fatigue, but the ghost count is up once again

And on WaniKani, learned an important kanji today, 隼, me likey this one ^^

---

Life

Hanoi, Part 2! Finally managed to get my camera to take pictures I’d like for it to take xddd

Bad news for the fans of fresh air, good news for the fans of flowers though ^^

Here’s a wild adventure from today though, there was this tram on the north side of the story that was a tiny museum of some communism-adjacent things, and it was free under the promise that I’d record an interview together and tell them what did I think of it and endorse them and their page on Tripadvisor, so I was like ‘yeah, sure, why not’ xdd

So I took my mom inside and it looked like an interior of a Polish home back in like, 1980s, under the soviet regime or something, food stamps, recording devices, documents with seals, etc, so my mom was nostalgic C:

We went out and they asked us to interview immediately and I was like “eeee” xdd
I introduced myself, played the game of returning their hospitality back at them and being very polite, and afterwards they treated us to some tea and soviet era snacks, as two cameras were pointing at us and we were making the “mmmMmMMmm” sounds and trying to smile so that it’d look like we’re REALLY enjoying it xddd
It’s exactly like a maid cafe experience, you need to play along and also perform back at them ^^

But they were really happy to hear from tourists and they were really surprised with the fact that we had Pho soups back in Europe, so hey, that was fun xddd

Unrelated museum tram pomelo dog xddd

We tried going to a pagoda up north, but we got stopped because both me and my mom were wearing too short clothes, and women at the entrance were trying to stop us and give us a piece of cloth that would cloak us, but as soon as they told us the service was 200k (around €6.5?) we were like “LMAO NO” and decided not to walk in

Something something, street decorations

Cheapest kebab I’ve ever seen, at below €1 xdd

We paid for the tickets to go to the Shine of Literature

Also, lots of small shrines along the city ^^

This one is like, SUPER romantic xdd

Egg coffee and durian shake, my mom grew to enjoy durian as she drank xddd

ms. birdie getting a shower yees

And then we took the tuk tuk equivalent, a cyclo, to the other side of the town ^^

Also, omg, look at this Blahaj

So here’s when the adventure #2 starts: there is an English bookstore in the town called The Bookshelf Hanoi and it’s rated 4.9 on Google Maps with 209 ratings, so you know it’s good ^^

But, it was a bit of a weird experience, because the books in there have been some of the most generic books you can find in the Englishsphere and I was like, hm, a little let down?
But the person working in there was an absolute golden heart and she really wanted to talk about books and she liked my Kånken bag and wanted to hear about Europe and was down for yapping and I kinda have a feeling that if I were staying in Hanoi, we could become friends, so would recommend her! Also, there’s workshops in zine-making at her place ^^

Bought some stickers and a viernamese pizza-making zine from her and got a recommendation for a Vietnamese manga publisher, that I dragged my mom to xddd

Also, Angela Merkel book xddd

Me, exerting my camera to take HDR pictures of a cathedral xdd

Had some beef pho today, didn’t take a pic of my mom’s stew though

Went for some coffee and some indie art

Saw some people dancing in front of the lake in the city

MONKI KING

And yeah, we’ve booked a bus trip for tomorrow, outside of Hanoi, because the air quality is atrocious and today me and my mom started both coughing darker flegm, so you already know it’s bad enough xddd

…i’m not joking by the way, I don’t know if I’ve had it happen at any other point in my lifetime.
But yeah, it’s a part of the experience xddd

But it was fun and adventurous and we’ll see what tomorrow brings!
See you tomorrow! C:

[pemBOO]

Today I’ve done amateur hour!

Til it’s goly not golly

I’m too embarrassed to ask the difference

[Malinkal]

@pemBOO

Til it’s goly not golly

golly that took you a while

@pemBOO

I’m too embarrassed to ask the difference

me too

@GolyBidoof

And on WaniKani, learned an important kanji today, 隼

I have never seen this before in my life
where’s some animal radical bit, I don’t like it

[YandrosTheInsane]

@Malinkal

I have never seen this before in my life
where’s some animal radical bit, I don’t like it

Oh yes you have more or less 隼 <=> 準 same On: ジュン

[Malinkal]

Sorry I only know 准 (looks better than 準 anyway )

I’ve seen はやぶさ thanks to the Tohoku Shinkansen (and the space probe), but literally never seen the kanji before as far as I know

Although I was wrong, forgot that 隹 is actually a bird radical

[YandrosTheInsane]

I thought 準備 was common ?

You should have seen it at least twice in Higurashi’s first arc.

(strong case of knowing the word makes the kanji disappear ?)

[Malinkal]

Yeah it’s common, I do know 準 just being silly! 准 is just a different form and they’re interchangeable sometimes in stuff like 准教授

[GolyBidoof]

@pemBOO

Today I’ve done amateur hour!

VERY NICE C: <3
proud of you pembo, enjoy the high, your body starts getting used to that level of fatigue really quickly

last couple of days ^^

@pemBOO

Til it’s goly not golly

golly me, how come you mistook that one for something different!

@pemBOO

I’m too embarrassed to ask the difference

@Malinkal

me too

you probably should be xddd

the word “goły” in polish just means “naked”, it’s an inside joke from league/steam days with friends and i carry both the words “goły” and “naked” into some of my nicknames around the internet, though i’ve switched from “naked” to “wicked” on steam a while back

i still like the way how foreign community reacts to the sound of “goly”, less the meaning, so why not just keep it up xddd

sorry xddd

September 19th, 2025

• 163 reviews on WaniKani
• 15 lessons on WaniKani
• 23 reviews on Bunpro
• 3 stories on Satori Reader
• Book: 響け！ ユーフォニアム 北宇治高校吹奏楽部へようこそ, 56%->79%, read almost 100 pages today xddd

Ah yes, taking a bus to the attraction, what a concept xdd

Gave me a lot of time to read, ahead of the reading marathon, I’ll sadly won’t do a great score there, but I read in Japanese for something like 4-5 hours today, plus I spoke to a few people in Japanese while at the trails, giving them guidance on which track to take and saying the phatic expressions left and right: who would guess that in order to see Japanese tourists everywhere, you need to go to countries that are both in remote proximity to Japan and are cheaper than Japan xddd

Our bus even had a few Japanese people today and I only revealed to them that I speak Japanese when we were about to head back ^^

Anyway, some highlights from reading 響け today:

• I love how heavy on kansai-ben 夏紀’s speech is, you read something like
  思っとらんかったから
  頑張れへんかったんやと思う
  and go like “what are you trying to say” xdddd
  good thing the dictionary I have for Yomitan can help me identify those expressions and maps them properly, like:
  
  
  
  really comes to the rescue
• 青春18きっぷ, I didn’t know this was a thing! Really cool to be discovering things about Japan from the books! Apparently it’s pretty similar to JR Pass, but for people living in Japan (of any age) and can be used for a shorter time, so we stan Hibike C:
• うれしさを噛み殺したような歪な表情を作り上げる made me laugh, great expression
• Absolute best scene from chapter 3, I’ll mark it with a spoiler:

MVP

「アタシはさ、特別になりたい」
「特別？」
「そう。他人から称賛されたい。ほかのやつらと同じって、思われたくない」
AAAAAAAAA

Fun book either way, I would like to finish it before reaching Kuala Lumpur, and we’ll see how I do ^^

---

Life

Ninh Bình, Vietnam!

Following up on the story of the air condition from yesterday, we willingly took a tourist trap and took a package holiday bus to the old capital of Vietnam, and it was full of adventures, so here goes!

The first part of the tour involved cycling to the old capital, and I was excited for the cycle being like “WUU BIKE”, it was 7.5 minutes long xddd

That’s not to say the bike trip wasn’t cool, we had some really cool sights along the way ^^

There were people on the side of the road taking pictures of us, that later caught up with us at the capital and were trying to sell us laminated pictures of us cycling, and I was like “no lmao”, so no money for them

The capital wasn’t very big and it was moved pretty early on, so it was more of a throwback to the past and an explanation of some of the mythos of Vietnam, and where do some ideas come from. Spoiler, very bloody history, as usual ^^

Then, over the trip, it started raining, aND WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS, it’s monsoon after all xddd

We had an emergency cycle back over monsoon and our plastic foils weren’t enough to keep us dry over the 7.5 minutes of a cycle xddd
Buffet all-you-can-eat-lunch that we stayed a bit longer at to wait for the rain to subside, it had a few interesting dishes though ^^

And finally, it became a bit better, so we tried to hit the boat right next to Ninh Bình:

Row, row, row your boat, actually we had a person that was rowing for us and our rowing was at will individually activitized xdd

Obligatory, monsoon part #2 right after the boat xddd

And then we set off for a climb of the Núi Ngoạ Long, Lying Dragon Mountain, which is 500-steps tall
When I heard about the altitude at first, I was really disappointed, and yyyy, the whole hike was 7 minutes long from the bottom xdddd

There was a different hike you could set off halfway through, the more dangerous one was the dragon one (危ない! according to the japanese tourists xddd), and the milder one was the many-floors-tower one (めっちゃすげぇ〜 according to the japanese tourists xddd)

But you could stop at many places along the way and take some pictures, and the sights have been GORGEOUS, this is where the op picture is from C:

Oh and look, a Nett hier sticker at the top xddd

This is one of the most justified uses of the sticker I’ve seen so far tbh, “but have you been to Baden-Württemberg???” xddd

But even this short of a hike was enough to make me feel at home, I love hiking, I love the fresh air there and I love jumping from one step to the other C:

Plantations at the bottom~

I got some panda cookies for sharing my photos with other people at the trip! C:

And then, back to Hanoi, because today is Friday, and this means… that a part of the city is roped off from car/scooter traffic for the weekend market! Actually incredible! We should do that in Berlin too C:

Street music, street theater performances…

Jumping ropes and board games!

and tables EVERYWHERE in the strict middle of the city!

A six-year old girl from Vietnam came to us, introduced herself as Lucy and started asking us questions in English, like “what’s your favorite animal”, “where are you from”, “do you like hanoi”, and I was going like “uh oh”, but then Lucy was happy with the answers and she gave us a handshake, told us bye bye and went off screaming and laughing to her dad, apparently really happy with the answers, so I hope that Lucy grows to be an amazing person xdd

After that, the night market in Hanoi is a bit different than in other places, I’d prefer not to post pictures of it, but there’s a lot of, eee, decadence and eroticity going around xddd
Both me and my mom were like walking through the district and trying not to get taken into a strip bar xdd

But aside from that though, really cool day in terms of both adventures and learning Japanese, tomorrow we’ve booked a Hanoi cooking class, so I’ll try to report from that one too ^^

Two more full days in Hanoi and then we’re off to Kuala Lumpur!

See you tomorrow! C:

[Malinkal]

@GolyBidoof

青春18きっぷ, I didn’t know this was a thing! Really cool to be discovering things about Japan from the books! Apparently it’s pretty similar to JR Pass,

Kind of, but no shinkansen or express trains, only local trains can be used, so it takes a while
It makes up for it by being unbelievably ridiculously cheap (used to be 12,000yen for 5 days of literally unlimited local trains, non-consecutive, across like a month period, could split the days between people too)
However last year they kind of ruined it and made it so you have to use it on consecutive days, I still managed to use it twice but I think it’s done its usefulness now

@GolyBidoof

the word “goły” in polish

@GolyBidoof

Gave me a lot of time to read, ahead of the reading marathon, I’ll sadly won’t do a great score there, but I read in Japanese for something like 4-5 hours toda

Friday technically counts I think, you could always post this as your reading for the challenge! Also very nice reading numbers regardless

[prath]

@GolyBidoof

omg, look at this Blahaj

OMG I LOVE THAT!!!

[GolyBidoof]

September 20th, 2025

• 163 reviews on WaniKani
• 15 lessons on WaniKani
• 21 reviews on Bunpro
• 3 stories on Satori Reader
• Book: 響け！ ユーフォニアム 北宇治高校吹奏楽部へようこそ, 79%->80%, just one panel on ttsu ^^

I made a post in the Autumn Readathon to just be done with this book as quickly as possible, I hope that by the time I’m writing an update tomorrow, I’ll have made a huge dent in the book ^^

---

Life

Hanoi, Part Again!

Today, I woke up with a huge tinnitus and my ears were ringing xdd
I put on noise-cancelling headphones and walked out in the streets, and they did help a bit ^^

SPECIAL ALERT FOR THE FANS OF GOOD FOOD, good food incoming C:

Tripadvisor gifted us today with Vietnamese cooking classes, so to kick them off, we went to the market to get some ingredients C:

Cool story, we’ve learned that the noodle merchants prepare noodles each day very early in the morning, at something like 3am, how long do they sleep if that’s a time when people should be going to sleep xddd

Our cooking course had five different recipes, pho soup, meatballs, spring rolls, papaya salad and egg coffee, all traditional Vietnamese recipes ^^

Our teacher was a young Vietnamese woman whose English was better than mine, and I was there being like “wtf how come you speak so good at this language”, but yeah, practice, practice ^^

We had a feast of all of the things we’ve prepared, and pho soup was an absolute winner in my heart ^^

We got fancy little certificates and recipe books that contained even more Vietnamese recipes you could try at home, I was really impressed in the level of the classes we’ve had today, and hey, I learned to both cook, and to cook Vietnamese xdd

The workshop was almost four hours long in total!

The touristy part of Hanoi today was still roped off from cars and scooters and even though today was supposed to be 35C (perceivable 44C), it felt colder than it was on Thursday, because you had area to breathe and no fumes as much ^^

We took a shot to visit the only line of metro trains in the whole of Vietnam, it’s pretty far away from the touristy area and by that time, people don’t speak English… pretty much at all, even with the basic expressions like “can I pay by card?”, so Google Translate live translate went into overtime and was really, really helpful ^^

Some views from the train!

Also, started coughing pollution there again, so we decided to just head back to the touristy area xdd

We booked another trip for tomorrow, no spoilers yet, and then there’s a lot of sellers in Hanoi that try to get you to go for a massage by screaming “HELO MASAA” your way as you walk by, so we just caved in and went for a full body masaa ^^
Very, uhhh, painful? xdd

I mean, in a good way, but no joints made a click, even though my shoulders feel very stiff and I was like noooo I really had high hopes

And then, weekend market again! Kids riding gokarts! Kids riding rollerblades! How cool is that!

Concerts on traditional folk instruments! Đàn bầu and T’rưng! We stayed for like half an hour to listen to the performances, and tipped the artists afterwards ^^

Paper cards! Crocheted animals! Really good taste for the crochet btw, they even had Malinkal in there xddd

Got some more souvenirs and we’re down to just one full day in Vietnam left, look forward to the trip tomorrow ^^

See you tomorrow!