Hikaru Watanabe was honored on stage at the 19th Vietnamese Speech Contest in Japan held on November 2, shining under the lights and applause. Holding the microphone, he spoke about his journey to the Vietnamese language: the early days of confusion in Hanoi, friendships formed in the classroom, familiar pho shops, and moments of saying things wrong and then laughing together. In that moment, Hikaru Watanabe was not only a contestant but also living proof of the connecting power of language, an inspiration to foreign friends who love Vietnamese.

Leaving his dream job in Japan to move to Vietnam in 2016, Kaneya Manabu finds the Vietnamese "treat each other with love, not with pressure over work or income."