みなと区民祭り / Minato Citizens' Festival

'07 Minto Citizens' Festival was held on October 6 and 7, for two days at Shiba park and the areas around the park, such as Tokyo Prince Hotel and Zojyo-Temple.

The areas were divided into six areas and each area had different concept. For example, Prince Hotel area was named as "Concourse of gourmand and alcohol from all over the world" and people could enjoy unique food from 13 different countries such as Cuba, India, Australia.

Moreover, there was "Home Product area" in front of the Minato word office. This area had food, alcohol, sweets from all over Japan and many people were enjoying different food from different areas at the table which was prepared in the middle.

Other than the booth, there were parade by 26 groups of 2000 people, and performance by different groups on stage such as dance, Martial arts, and chorus.

HISTORY

This festival was first started to create a place where people communicate with each other. The festival has been held for 26 years and number of perticipants increased year by year. Now this festival has grown up to one of the major event in Minatoku which mobilize more than two hundred thousand people. Compare to other festivals, this festival is very safe because all the booth are managed by shopping arcade community people and organization which is approved by Minato-ku, and it contains no Tekiya(mountebank) which is booth paticurally come to festivals to sell their products and most of the time it is related to Yakuza.

I had chance to talk with two people from Red Brick shopping arcade who has been doing booth at this festival since it's started. They said "it had no publicity when its started, and there were not many people who can buy our products which we were selling. So we bought food from each other's booth to help each other." They also said they are very surprized that this festival had grown to this big, and very international as well. 26 years ago, there were almost no foreigner at this festival but the foreign participants has been growing along with the festival growth. I asked them what they expect the festival to be from now on and they answered, "We expect it to continue growing and being held so people from Minatoku have a place to communicate. It is one of the very important tradition for Minatoku People and also for shopping arcade community in Minatoku. So we hope it to never die out."

TEMPLE

Temple was also involved in this festival from this year. There were volunteer workers from Temple which come and help out this festival from several years ago, but this year was the first time for them to be deeply invorved. Total of 4 groups from Temple joined this festival and make Temple's name known to more people.