Kobe Lantern Festival 2022

2022.12.28

Please also refer to the report of 2021.
→<<https://social-b.net/baiyu/en/lantern2021en/>>

Kobe Lantern Festival 2022 has been held with 800 colorful lanterns on October 21st (Fri) and 22nd (Sat). This year we displayed lanterns at many new places including Futaba Gakusha, Taishosuji Shopping Street, Shin-nagata Ohashi Tunnel and Kobe Life Creation Center. Thanks to the cooperation with many people, we were able to hold the event at the largest scale. We had 2,300 visitors at Futaba Gakusha.

Lantern display

In addition to 550 lanterns that we had last year, we added 250 new lanterns this year. A lot of people including those who are learning Japanese, volunteers and children painted original designs on the lanterns. In order to provide people more opportunity to enjoy the lanterns, we displayed lanterns not only for only two days but for one week. There were also people who enjoyed looking for the lanterns they painted.

Ukrainian refugees who are learning Japanese at Futaba International Center also painted original designs on the lanterns. Especially those who love art enjoyed the activity a lot. Some of them enjoyed the activity so much and even joined another painting event held at Kobe International Community Center (KICC).

Successful Oyako Ennichi (a fair for children and their parents)

We added more programs compared to last year. This year we had “Super Ball Scooping”, “Rubber Band Gun”, “Plays for Children in the World” and “Senbonbiki(one thousand strings lottery). We were able to have such many programs which children enjoyed so much thanks to the cooperation with Futaba Gakusha.

We also had various stage programs including Chindon performance (Japanese traditional parade), magic, a music performance by Mongolian children, hula dance and a performance by a local pop star group. Besides, Kobe International Community Center (KICC) also held “KICC Ennichi” on October 22nd. In addition to that, a Japanese food restaurant in Taishosuji Shopping Street also joined us with a stall of Goldfish Scooping. We made a map that has a stamp rally game (children get snacks if they collect stamps at both Futaba Gakusha and Taishosuji shopping street.) and succeeded in letting visitors to visit both locations.

Food stalls

This year we were able to have food stalls which we couldn’t have in recent years due to covid-19. Thanks to the cooperation with local restaurants and groups, we had international stalls including South Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, Brazil and Ukraine at Futaba Gakusha and Kobe International Community Center (KICC). In front of KICC we had a Ukrainian stall, where Ukrainian refugees sold pirozhki. 9 Ukrainian refugees enjoyed communicating with local people.

Comment from a volunteer

I joined the event as a volunteer. I saw many children and families visited the event and enjoyed games and stage programs at Oyako Ennichi. I was especially surprised by the scene that people make a line for Senbonbiki all the time. I was glad to see many people enjoyed the event. I would like to join the event next time as well and continue to help interaction between local people and encourage the region to be more active.

For future

This time we were supported by 18 groups and individuals at 93,000yen. At the Ennichi we got 7,928 yen at donation boxes. We highly appreciate the support. We will continue to make the scale of the event bigger and bigger every year and help foreign residents to participate in local activities and help further interaction between people.