Sitting on ceremony: A Japanese tea master performs at the Fukushima Festival in Ha Noi. — VNS Photo Minh Thu

HA NOI (VNS) — Fans of manga enjoyed an opportunity to learn how to create the Japanese comics during the Fukushima Festival held at the Vietnamese Women's Museum yesterday.

The museum and the Fukushima-Viet Nam Friendship Association organised the event, which aims to enhance the friendship between Viet Nam and Japan.

One of the festival highlights was a seminar on manga, or comics created in Japan using a style developed in the 19th century, that the International Art Design College hosted.

At the seminar, Japanese manga artists introduced the comics business for advertising and commercial purposes.

The organisers also presented comics about manju (steamed confectionery with red bean paste) and sake (Japanese rice wine).

Visitors had a chance to enjoy manga works at an exhibit and learn more about Japanese culture, especially how to create manga. Participants also experienced making comics using professional tools.

The event included various activities such as exhibits showcasing the accomplishments of Fukushima residents, whose resilience and strength enabled them to recover from a tsunami and nuclear plant disaster in March 2011.

The twin disasters nearly destroyed this peaceful and beautiful city, the capital of Fukushima Prefecture. Over the past years, residents have been living and working together to bring back the city's inherent beauty.

The festival provided information about Japan's traditional arts such as ikebana (flower arrangement demonstration), tea ceremony and yosakoi dance, as well as Fukushima's specialities, including nihonsyu liquor and the craft of painting dolls.

The exhibit also showed the beauty of the traditional culture, nature and sustainable development, as well as knowledge and understanding, of this Japanese city.

This was the second time the festival was organised here. Last year, the festival honoured the contribution of Viet Nam to the city's recovery after the disaster.

Shiraiwa Yasuo, president of the association, revealed that about 3,000 people took part in the festival.

"As the first festival was more successful than expected, we decided to organise another one, highlighted by a manga seminar and a fashion show with designs by students from Imaizumi School," Yasuo explained.

"It's been three-and-a-half years since the disaster, and we consider the festival this year as an occasion to show Fukushima today, with strong vitality, natural beauty and safe agricultural products," he said.

At the festival, Fukushima resident Agemi Shiheware revealed that she and her companions brought with them numerous beautiful tea cups and other tools used in the tea ceremony to enable festival visitors to take part.

"We introduce pottery tea cups with sophisticated patterns and ask the Vietnamese people to join our tea ceremony," she explained. "During the festival, we organised eight tea ceremony sessions to introduce our traditional culture."

"We also introduced business comics that focused on manju, our speciality, and we also offer manju during the tea ceremony," Shiheware added. — VNS