International Exchange Festival 2019

　The first International Exchange Festival – “KooRyuuMatsuri” was held at Kofu campus on 10^th July. There were about 300 participants including local community, international students and professors and staff of the university.
　The festival aims at providing a venue enabling international students as well as the local community people to exchange and enhance mutual understanding of their cultures. It is supported by Kofu city with the fund raised through the so called “Furusato Nozei”, a preferential treatment on taxation for donations allowing people to pay a certain proportion of local tax amount to ones’ favorite town for supporting some particular projects. Last September, Kofu city established a new “Furusato Nozei” project for promoting the internalization of the city together with the universities located in the city. 
　The festival opened with the speech by president Shimada and a greeting from Mr.Tanaka, International Exchange City Section Manager.
　There were various “World’s” booths, “World’s Food” booth by international students, “World’s Toy” booth where you can play with toys from varios countries, “World’s Quiz” for gaining the knowledge about different countries and “Stamp Rally”, with which one can collect stamps on a card by communicating with international students in their mother language. In addition to the “World’s” booths, there were also Japanese summer traditions, such as “Nagashi-Somen” (catching flowing noodle with chopsticks), “Suika-Wari” (splitting watermelon with long wooden stick while being blindfolded)  and “Yo-Yo Tsuri” (fishing balloons floating on water).       At “World’s Food” booth, there were 13 dishes from 9 countries, France, United Kingdom, Thailand, Germany, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Nepal. There was also a Japanese local food “Yakome” offered from local community.  All participants enjoyed those booths very much and could touch or learn the cultures of various countries through the experiences.
　27 Participants of University of Yamanashi Summer Program(UYSP) on Japanese Language and Culture also joined this festival wearing Japanese traditional garment Yukata (a casual version of Kimono) and experienced Japanese Summer traditions.