Niwa Community Center

Today, I was invited by my senior in PhD course at the University of Tokyo (above picture: white shirt) to have a Cultural Exchange Talk with a group of about 20 attendances at Niwa Community Center, Chiba Prefecture. The meeting was organized by my senior's mom, who is really interested in everything about Cambodia especially the Khmer culture and food. One and half hour had passed through lots of interesting questions from the attendances. It is great to see Cambodia's culture fascinates more and more Japanese recently. Surely, I welcome and ready to share with them at my utmost.


I introduced them some of the basic information about Cambodia, and showed them some photos of Cambodian foods. One of the photos is Cambodian Chicken curry that I made which Cambodian people usually eat it thin-rice noodle that we call in Khmer language "Num Banhchok". It is similar to Japanese "Somen". Then, it reminds me to talk about the story of "Num Banhchok" and Japanese "Udong". According to a made-up story, Japanese "Udong" may probably come from Cambodia. Udong is the name of old Cambodia's capital city located at the northen part of the current capital city, Phnom Penh, that "Num Banhchok" originated from. Once upon a time, Japanese people went to Udong and saw people there eating "Num Banhchok", so they asked what is the name of that food? The local people there misinterpret the question to "What is the name of the place?" So, they answered "Udong". Then, the Japanese people thought Num Banhchok's name is Udong. Thus, they name Japanese Udong as Udong.

The same story is happened to Pumpkin, potato and sweet potato (Satsumaimo). Pumpkin was brought into Japan by portuguese sailors in 1541. the portuguese name the pumkin as "kabocha abobora", then the term was shortened by the Japanese to "Kabocha". Even now in Japanese language "Cambodia" is "Kambocha. About the Potato that in Japanese language calls "Jagaimo" was imported to Japan via Jakarta in the 17th century. The term is from "Jaka"(rta) + "imo". Imo means roots of vegetable. Similar to "Satsumaimo" which came from "Satsuma" + "Imo". "Satsuma" is the name of a small country in the seventh century, it was located in the west of current Kagoshima Prefecture. Kyushu Island is one of the country in Japan in the ancient era. It is interesting, isn't it?

I think not many japanese people know this tale and when they heard about that they seemed to be very surprised. One lady in the class brought Cambodia Map written in Japanese, and she found the place named Udong. After that, everybody just laughed and talked to me: "so, the right way to eat Udong is to eat it with Curry. Isn't it?" and all just kept laughing and laughing......