I have a few to say but I'll leave that for later because y'all have NO IDEA WHAT IVE JUST BEEN THROUGH!!!
So as a Jap growing up mainly in Vietnam it's always been hard to find real Jap food. I mean sure, it can be made and all but there is no "JAPANESEness" in it. Like, as a restaurant, you can cover up your walls, dress the ingredients and make it look like the real thing. BUT it's just not the same... I guess one of the thing that brings it down is that, the lack of ingredients and the way how they change the flavouring to fit the foreigners taste for more customers. the lack of UMAMI ;n;
So anyway since the beginning of this year, because my mums been going out with friends more and doing lots of charity work my dad and I have these daddy-daughter sundays where we go Japanese food hunting at least twice a month. I happen to ask my dad about the best ramen place in HCMC and my dad says none of them are as good. Theres more than 200 Japanese food stores in the city and even my dad hasn't eaten in all those places. Though since he has Japanese customers here and there, they often take him or recommend some new places. So he found a new place today and I was surprised once we got there.
See, most of the Japanese food shops are down town in the first district on this certain road. My dads been to most of the stores there and it's either "okay" or SOOOOOOOPER expensive. (Since its the main district and all the foreigners etc = expensive 
) But my dad turned into this small alley... Then he kept turning here and there (the alleys are so badly constructed here in this city) and we went past so many more Japanese stores all over the place. So many that I've never seen or even heard of. They all looked like those shabby family-business restaurant in Japan. Nothing like those fitting-the-high-standard stores outside of the alley. My dad stopped and it was seriously a tiny store. Looked something like this on the outside and this on the inside. The inside was so cramped though. Could only fit 9 customers total on the counter and the space we had to move in was just fit for two people standing sideways. Only 3 staff, tea is self served, menu of less than 20 options, not even translated into any language. The customers were all Japanese. Saw few scruffy guys. The typical possibly-in-their-30s-living-a-none-exciting-life-with-average-pay-that-you-see-in-animes kind of males too. It was even quite odd since the place screamed to me as TESTOSTERONE. It felt sorta odd being the only female. Everything was homemade. Since there was only the counter table I could see what was happening behind. EVERYTHING was made from scratch. After listening to my dad make small talk with the tenchou, he said he wanted to spread his teacher's ramen to other parts of Asia. Interesting since he'd gone through the ramen training ^^
The ramen came. And I could tell it was made from scratch. Not like those bought-from-japan in the other shops. What surprised me was the renge they used. It was huge! Prolly from my wrist to my elbow. I tried the soup. .......
FLIPPIN
FOOD
GASMIC.
LIKE, RAMEN???
THIS IS WHAT IM TALKING BOUT!!
JOYOUS DAIZZZZ ;u;
Welp, now I'm taking my half Jap bro/friend, Yoshi on a back-alley-Japanese food tour after his graduation. It's set perfect. I'm gonna make sure we both starve for the whole saturday and we'll chow down on the following day. Yup.
Also I challenged myself in making a mille crepe. It turned out great ^^
Edited by Rukapi-, 06 April 2014 - 03:20 PM.
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*hi five Kanaade* grads in 4 year where this programs takes 6 years, 
