The flowers are bound together.

Lately I've been talking about nothing but food, so today's story is a little different. Markets are an essential part of daily life in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and among them, the one place I just can't help stopping at is the flower shop.

In any case, flowers are cheaper here than in Japan, and just that alone makes me a little happy. When you go to the market, flowers are piled up in huge mounds from early morning. It's the kind of quantity that makes you think, "Is it really okay to have this many?" — yet, mysteriously, in about three hours it's almost bare ground. Completely cleared out, sold out. By far the most abundant in variety are chrysanthemums, but there are also sunflowers, gladioli, lilies, gerberas, carnations, roses, baby's breath, and more — flowers that are familiar in Japan too. In Japan, these are flowers you'd hesitate a little over before choosing at a florist, but here they're part of everyday life. The price depends on the type, but the most standard chrysanthemums go for about 35,000–40,000 dong. In Japanese yen, that's just a little over 200 yen. I understand why flowers aren't something "special" here. In Vietnam, arranging flowers is a casual thing, and there are flowers here and there — at the entrance, on the table, at the household altar, everywhere.

It's a completely ordinary sight to see a man buying flowers, too. He stops his motorbike in front of the flower shop, points to what he wants and buys it, and the shop staff quickly ties the bouquet onto his bike. A bit of teamwork carried out without a single word. It's an everyday scene you'd never find in Japan.

The florist stands by with a short string dangling, ready to tie it up in an instant. So this is the style you like, isn't it?

And the sight of a man carrying a bouquet of flowers is an everyday scene here, and my own husband, too, will casually drop by and buy flowers whenever the mood strikes him.

And so, our household casually arranges flowers too. But this turns out to be surprisingly difficult. The balance. The spacing. The direction. Once you start thinking about it, there's no end to it. But because flowers are cheap, you can afford to fail. You concentrate as you arrange them, and if you think, "Ah, that's not right," you can just start over. Admiring the flowers and engaging with them is a calming, pleasant time for me. Today, I selected small white flowers for 50,000 dong.

A slender, wispy stem. A gentle curve. That line stretching up so softly—it's something you could never draw, a form crafted by the god of the natural world. How truly wondrous it is~ and how utterly adorable, I feel deep down.

The arrangement style is my own original. I'm not really good at mixing lots of things together, so I went with a single display. I wanted to leave as much space as possible, but the flowers, stems, and leaves just wouldn't do quite what I told them. There's probably no right answer. Well, something like this.

The water boiled at just the right moment

Orchids and baby's breath

Yellow gerberas and pom-pom mums (name unknown) Relocation life ranking