Kanagawa festival in Hanoi draws large crowds

The two-day festival sees a wide range of cultural activities take place, whilst an array of famous sightseeing spots located throughout Japan’s Kanagawa prefecture was introduced to visitors in the form of local tourism products and services.

The cultural exchange aims to help Vietnamese firms understand more about Kanagawa’s tourism and business potential.

The conclusion of the event will also serve as its highlight, with a Japanese folk festival will take the stage on November 17 at the Hanoi Opera House, with proceeds from ticket sales donated to the local Nguyen Dinh Chieu secondary school, which caters for a large number of visually-impaired students.

Following the festival, on November 18, a Vietnam-Japan investment promotion conference will be held.

Since 2015, Kanagawa has organised the Vietnamese Festival annually. Last year’s event, on September 8-9, drew over 400,000 visitors. A Vietnam water puppetry art troupe was sent to perform at the event.

In early September this year, the 6^th Vietnam Festa ran in Kanagawa, introducing Vietnam’s unique culture and traditional cuisine to Japanese and international friends.

Kanagawa Prefecture is located close to Tokyo and is imbued with typical Japanese features. It is well-known for its beautiful port city of Yokohama and other tourist destinations such as Hakone hot springs, the Kumakura Buddha relic area, the Ashinoko Lake tourist site, and so on.

Japan is one of the most important source markets of international tourists to Vietnam. In 2018, the country welcomed 826,000 Japanese visitors, a year-on-year rise of 3.6 percent. In the first eight months of this year, over 620,000 Japanese tourists arrived in Vietnam, up 13.7 percent annually.

Meanwhile, more and more Vietnamese people are traveling to Japan. In 2018, nearly 390,000 visited the country, a year-on-year increase of 26 per cent, according to the Japan National Tourist Organization./.