From August 26 to 27, CLAIR Sydney ran a booth at the Sydney Cherry Blossom Festival 2018 held in the Auburn Botanical Gardens by Cumberland Council. The festival took place from August 17 to 26, and approximately 90,000 visitors came to the venue to see the beautiful cherry blossoms.
At the event, we were promoting Japanese tourism destinations as a part of our promotional activities for Japanese local governments. In particular, we focused on areas famous for cherry blossoms that are unfamiliar to most Australians. For example, in Tsubame City in Niigata Prefecture, you can see women dressed in exquisite kimono dresses parading along a street lined with cherry blossom trees as a part of the Oiran Parade held in the city. Cherry blossoms are the symbol of spring in Japan but in Toyota City in Aichi Prefecture, visitors can enjoy cherry blossom viewing as well as autumn leave viewing at the same time in the latter half of November! Other than cherry blossoms, we also promoted the plum blossoms in Minabe Town in Wakayama Prefecture. The town is known for umeboshi, pickled Japanese plums, and at the festival, we gave away umeboshi samples to visitors. While some of the visitors said they have heard of umeboshi before and some said they have not, everyone showed interest in umeboshi.
Our booth was full of visitors throughout the day and we believe they were excited about discovering new tourism information on Japan!
From the 3rd to the 13th of December, eight selected swimmers from the Fukuoka Swimming Association visited NSW, where they participated in joint training sessions with a local school and competed in the 2024-25 Speedo NSW Senior State Age Championships.
