Real cherry branches made it to Hanoi festival

200 real Japanese cherry branches arrived in Hanoi Friday in a Vietnam Airlines flight to get ready for the annual Cherry Blossom festival opening at Giang Vo Exhibition Center Saturday.
They have been preserved in a cold room and grafted together to make two big trees by Japanese experts and volunteers, said Yoshio Murakami of the Japan Foundation which has been the organizer of the festival for four years.
Last year, as the festival was held in May, when the cherry blossom season in Japanese had passed, the organizers had to make do with artificial flowers.
70 dancers from four Yoshakoi and Nakin teams also arrived in Hanoi on the same day to get prepared for their performances in the festive event.
Origami experts and chefs from Japan have been all set, which adds a new touch to this year’s festival.
As part of the activities, visitors will fold 1,000 paper cranes as prayers for victims of the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. A fund raising event for the victims will also be held.
300 students from Japanese language centers around Hanoi have signed up to volunteer, Murakami said, alongside the Giang Vo center’s professional security guards, which will ensure that the chaos in 2008 when fest-goers jostled to pluck blossoms will not repeat.
This year’s festival, which is the 4th of its kind to be organized by the Japan foundation, is called Genki, the Japanese word for energy.

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