By WAKA OTA

TOKYO (Jiji Press) -- The Vietnam Festival 2026 was held in central Tokyo last weekend, allowing Japanese locals and Vietnamese residents to enjoy Vietnamese cuisine, traditional water puppet shows, and stage performances by Erik and other popular Vietnamese singers.

The festival, the 18th of its kind, featured over 100 booths, including those showcasing Vietnamese food, colorful clothes and bags. This year, the event organizer set up an air-conditioned eating space and a mobile ordering system to cut lines at food booths.

In addition to "banh mi" sandwiches and "pho" noodles, which are popular and widely known in Japan, "com tam" rice and grilled pork, "mi xao" stir-fried noodles, Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk, beer, coconut juice and many other delectable items were available.

"I came here to have banh mi and Vietnamese beer for lunch," said a man in his 40s from Kanagawa Prefecture, adding that watching modern and traditional performances made him feel Vietnam’s past and present. As a souvenir, he bought a scarf with a design based on the Vietnamese national flag.

A highlight of the event was water puppet performances. Originating in the north of Vietnam and with a history of about 1,000 years, the puppets attracted Japanese visitors with their realistic and amusing moves, such as a character struggling to catch a fish. The performance provided visitors with refreshing experiences amid the heat of the day. "Starting with the rice planting (scene), the performance touched our hearts," a woman in her 60s from Saitama Prefecture said, suggesting a similarity between Vietnamese and Japanese agricultural cultures.

At the festival’s opening ceremony, Vietnamese Ambassador to Japan Pham Quang Hieu said that over the previous 18 years the festival "has become a meaningful gathering place for people of Vietnam and Japan." The ambassador added that he believes the festival will bring the two countries’ peoples even closer.

A man in his 40s from Tokyo, who was making his third visit to the Vietnam Festival, invited his Vietnamese colleagues to the event this time. "We shared fresh spring rolls and “banh xeo” (savory pancakes)," he said. One of his Vietnamese colleagues, a 23-year-old who has lived in Japan for about two years, said the festival was "really good."

Ayaka Sugiyama, an official of the event’s organizing committee, said that the festival is a venue where Vietnamese people in Japan "can reunite with their friends." The event also plays a role as a platform for interaction for both Japanese and Vietnamese people who participate as volunteer staffers, she explained. "We want Japanese visitors to become interested in Vietnam through food...and to feel the energy of Vietnamese people" through stage performances, she added.

According to the Vietnamese Embassy in Japan, the festival attracted a total of about 200,000 visitors on Saturday and Sunday.

As of the end of 2025, 681,100 Vietnamese people were living in Japan, according to the Immigration Services Agency. They account for 16.5 pct of the total number of foreigners in the country, the second-largest group after Chinese nationals.