Japanese Summer Festival 2006 in Hamburg

The Japanese Summer Festival (Japanisches Sommerfest) is a two-day festival held by the Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg (Museum of Ethnology). The museum is one of the biggest of its kind in Europe and has been founded in 1879. Their Japan collection consists of over 5000 pieces with the first items arriving from 1861 in Hamburg: Samurai armor, Nô masks, dolls are part of the collection as well as 800 items from the Ainu, the indigenous people of Hokkaido.

At the Summer festival one could drink Japanese beer, buy some souvenirs without traveling to Japan and watch the events: Classical Japanese music, taiko drums and Karaoke. This is a rather small festival, but not the only Japan festival in Hamburg (Japanese Film Festival, Cherry Blossom Festival). I do feel that more could be done to promote tourism – there was an information desk, but not at the backyard where all the booths were.