Switchboard Art @ Hanoi (painted by Ho)

Off to Hanoi for an acquaintance's wedding. I set up a relaxed schedule with plenty of room to spare, and I'm staying at a hotel where the service was great when I stayed before, taking leisurely strolls. When I was young, I was a bundle of curiosity, always seeking out different places, different hotels, different shops. I'm not young anymore, so I can't be a pioneer. But instead, my strategy is to visit the places I love again and again—and to come to love them more and more. So this time too, if I take a liking to a new shop, I'll go back many times. That's why, morning and evening, whenever I have a spare moment, I walk around looking this way and that. And amid all that, what caught my eye was an electrical distribution box on the sidewalk—a little box with an illustration on it.

A lotus pattern that feels so Vietnamese. Electrical distribution boxes are plain to begin with. Or rather, they're not even placed on the sidewalk, in conspicuous spots, you know. You'd think they'd be pushed off into a corner so as not to get in the way as much as possible. Is it because in Vietnam the power lines are all concentrated in one place? Or is the way they're bundled up just sloppy? There are distribution boxes everywhere you look.

Is this bellflower? Or violet?

Is this a sunflower? The yellow that Vietnamese people love. The brushwork isn't exactly what you'd call skillful, but — to put it in Japanese terms, it's like one of those murals near an elementary school, an illustration drawn by the children... and that in itself has a certain charm.

There are touches like this too. There were other animal series as well. Messages that step into environmental issues. What's even more direct is

The plastic bag problem. Even in Vietnam, a country overflowing with plastic bags, is awareness of the issue starting to grow? I'd stayed away from Hanoi for about a year, but the city has been developed and keeps getting newer and newer. It seems there's still plenty left to explore. Expat Life Ranking