The opening ceremony will take place in the An Hoi Sculpture Garden on the night of August 21.

According to Vo Phung, Director of the Hoi An Centre for Culture and Sports, this year's event, the eighth of its kind, will feature a series of cultural and sporting exchange activities including a performance of Koto (a Japanese traditional musical instrument); a tea ceremony; calligraphy; Japanese traditional clothing (Kimono and Yukata) and Japanese cooking classes.

Many famous Japanese art troupes namely Iwami Kagura royal dance troupe, Daisuwa Taiko drum troupe and Sakai City’s lion dance troupe will also take part in the event.

Hoi An City will host a number of unique cultural activities such as the performances of traditional dance and musical instruments, a dragon dance, a floating lantern festival, a street exhibition of photographs about festivals, culinary activities together with many other sports exchange events including cross-river boat race, stick-pushing.

With seven festivals held since 2003, the ‘Vietnam – Japan Culture Exchange Days’ in Hoi An has become an annual event, aiming to strengthen the Vietnamese – Japanese friendship and co-operation as well as to popularise the charms of Hoi An Ancient Town, a World Cultural Heritage site, and attract more tourists from Japan.

Hoi An Ancient Town was one of the most thriving trade ports in Southeast Asia in the centuries of XVII, XVIII. Many traders from Portugal, the UK, France and Japan had come to Hoi An since the 17th century to do bussiness and many settled down and married to local residents… A Japanese quarter was established here and the Japanese Bridge (Nihonbashi), which is considered the symbol of Hoi An, is also a symbol of the cultural exchange between the two nations.

Since the early 1980s, Japanese organisations, experts and volunteers from the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) have come to Vietnam to research, support and directly supervise the restoration of many monuments in the ancient town.