The festival will also promote the most attractive features of “the resort capital” with culinary contests and arts and fashion shows, as well as water sports.The festive days will open with volleyball competitions, attracting many local professional teams, and surfing races on the smooth sand dunes of Ham Tien – Phan Tien with well known local and international athletes.

Opening the event, Ho Duc Viet, Politburo member of the Party Central Committee, Chairman of the Party Central Committee’s Commission of Organisation and President of the Vietnam-Japan Parliamentarians’ Friendship Group, stressed that the Vietnam-Japan Cultural Night is an major cultural and art event of important significance to mark the 35 th anniversary of the Vietnam-Japan diplomatic ties.

The successful Vietnam-Japan music gala night held in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in May, the current Vietnam Week in Japan, especially the Vietnam-Japan Cultural Night, would contribute to strengthening mutual understanding and confidence among people of the two countries, Viet said.

He expressed his pleasure at the fine development of Vietnam-Japan friendship and multifaceted cooperation over the past 35 years, adding that both countries are striving for the strategic partnership for peace and prosperity in Asia as the two countries’ leaders had agreed upon.

Together with progresses in political, socio-economic relations, Vietnam-Japan cultural cooperation has developed strongly and intensively over the recent past, contributing to tightening the two countries’ bilateral ties, he noted.

Viet thanked the Japanese government and people for their assistance to Vietnam and said he believed that Vietnam-Japan relations would be further developed and intensified.

The Mayor of Osaka, Kunio Hiramatsu, welcomed the cultural event, saying that it would help Osaka people enjoy special art performances which reflect identities of the Vietnamese culture.

He expressed his belief that the political, economic and cultural cooperation between the two countries in general and between Osaka and Vietnamese localities in particular will further develop.

Earlier the same day, a photo exhibition on Vietnam’s land and people was opened by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. More than 60 photos of famous landscapes in Vietnam and important development steps in Vietnam-Japan relations are displayed at the exhibition.

On this occasion, a seminar on Promotion of Vietnam-Japan air transport and tourism was held by the Vietnam Airlines Office in Japan to introduce new products of Vietnam’s airlines and tourism to Japanese tourists.

Within the framework of the Vietnam Week in Japan, taking place from Sept. 16-21, 2008,  various cultural and art exchange activities and investment forums will be organised in Osaka , Nagoya and Tokyo.

A 200-member delegation from Vietnam, including about 50 artists, actors and actresses and representatives of 70 businesses, will take part in these activities.

The dress, named “Crane’s dance” was made by designer Thuan Viet, imitating a queenly robe of Queen Nam Phuong – the wife of the last Vietnamese King, Bao Dai.

The robe introduced Vietnam’s traditional crafts of making embroidery and jewellery.

National dresses from Albania, Colombia, Dominica, India, Kosovo, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Venezuela were also honoured at the pageant held in Lion Theatre in southern Binh Duong Province on June 22.

Earlier, on June 21, beauties were grouped to make a tour of various destinations in Ho Chi Minh City.

A group of beauties from the US, Canada, India, the Philippines and Guam also visited patients and voluntary medical workers on the USNS Mercy ship of US navy that is on a medical humanitarian mission in central coastal Nha Trang City.

The Miss Universe 2008 contestants are scheduled to take part in a pageant of Vietnamese traditional ao dai on June 23.

According to the organising board, the live broadcast programme on the NBC channel of the final in Nha Trang City, central Khanh Hoa Province, on July 14 is expected to attract 1 billion viewers from over 160 countries and territories.

According to Vice Director of the Ha Tinh Museum Le Ba Hanh, the statue portrays a mother tiger that is sleeping in a very comfortable posture.

It is 30cm in length and weights around 12kg.

According to cultural researchers, the statue belongs to the Sa Huynh Culture, the name given to an urnfield (jar burials) culture on the coastal plains of central and southern Vietnam.

Roughly contemporaneous with the Dong Son Culture in the North (circa 1000BC and 200 AD), it possesses distinctive decorative style of bronze axes, daggers and ornaments.