Nguyen Dinh Dang didn't choose Japan so much as Japan chose him. The Soviet-trained Vietnamese nuclear physicist and painter first came to live here in 1995 at the invitation of Riken, a semigovernmental science and technology research institute.
"I was first invited to the University of Tokyo for 10 months in 1994 on the recommendation of my former teacher at Moscow State University, and then in 1995 I was invited to Riken," Dang explained. He has been working at the Wako, Saitama Prefecture, facility ever since, first as a research fellow and now as a contract researcher.
Dang lives in Wako with his Vietnamese wife and, until recently, his son, who is now going to college in the United States. He is positive about all aspects of life here, noting for example the reliability of the bureaucracy — "If they say something will take a week, it takes a week" — and the level of care at public hospitals. "When my wife was hospitalized once the service was so good she felt like she was the only patient," he says.