Vietnam Festival in Japan’s Kanagawa attracts thousands of visitors

At the festival (Photo: VNA)

The Vietnam Festival in Kanagawa is held annually from 2015 and has become the most prominent cultural exchange activity between Vietnam and Japanese localities in recent years. This year's festival is held directly after two years of suspension due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is closely monitored for pandemic prevention in the context that there are still hundreds of thousands of new COVID-19 infections every day in Japan.

At the festival, performances of water puppetry, traditional Vietnamese dance stage and T'rung ethnic musical instrument performance, Yokohama Yosakoi performance, and especially performances by the two famous Vietnamese singers Dong Nhi - Ong Cao Thang made participants excited, creating a sense of closeness between Vietnamese and Japanese people. In addition, like the previous festivals, stalls introducing cuisine, displaying handicrafts, and selling ST 25 rice, which is the best in the world, attracted the attention of many people.

The Governor of Kanagawa Prefecture, Mr. Kuroiwa Yuji, who has made great contributions to maintaining and focusing on the Vietnam Festival since the first time it was organized so far, said that the Vietnam Festival is one of the exchange activities looked forward to by people in Kanagawa and neighboring prefectures every year, and it has become an important event for the development of the prefecture. He also hoped that the festival would be held on an increasingly large scale in line with the development of the relationship between the two countries.

Vietnamese Ambassador to Japan Vu Hong Nam directly explained about the beauty of Vietnamese water puppetry art, making the audience more aware of the uniqueness of this art only in Vietnam. He affirmed that the similarities in culture and people between the two countries have created the closeness between the two peoples, promoting good development in many aspects in the Vietnam-Japan relationship.

On this occasion, the Vietnam-Japan Investment Forum, the Japanese Speech Contest and many other activities were held.

Kanagawa prefecture is home to the second largest number of Vietnamese people in Japan. There are about 26,000 interns and 1,700 overseas Vietnamese students living and studying there./.