“The Festivals of Commerce and Industry” were hosted by the Kamagaya Chamber of Commerce and Industry from the end of July to the beginning of August in the city. The chamber comprises six of storekeeper’s associations and they ran each festival in their own region.

Common menus in a Japanese festival such as fried noodles (yaki-soba), sausages, finely crushed ice with syrup on the top (kaki-gori), beer, and kinds of soft drink were sold to visitors at stands along sidewalks. And visitors also enjoyed various games such as scooping goldfish (kingyo-sukui) at stands. A lot of toys and accessories that children like were on sale. Liveliness came back to the shopping center, and it seems that the festival fairly improved returns of stores.

In the daytime, some groups in the city performed on Japanese dances such as yosakoi-soran dance and shofuku dance, and then many citizens took part in a Bon dance from the evening in the rotary square. The Bon dance has its beginning in Buddhism. It is said that people used to dance together during urabon’e, one of the Buddhism events, to comfort and send off spirits of their ancestors in olden days. This dance is called “Nembutsu dance” (nembutsu means “prayer to the Buddha” in Japanese), which evolved into the Bon dance later. The style of a Bon dance is different from region to region in Japan.

“The Festivals of Commerce and Industry” are parts of the attempts by the Kamagaya Chamber of Commerce and Industry aiming at providing citizens and members of storekeeper’s associations in each region with the chance to communicate with each other and at revitalizing the town.

Such a festival to come next is the 38^th Citizen Summer Festival that will be held from 10 am to 6 pm on August 25, Saturday, in the area of Shin-Kamagaya with the parking lot of the City Hall as the center. Many citizens look forward to this festival, which is the biggest event in the city, every year.

Background: About the city of Kamagaya

Kamagaya is surrounded by large cities of Funabashi, Kashiwa, Matsudo, and Ichikawa. Therefore the citizens usually go shopping to the neighboring cities, and it leads to slow business in some parts of the city. The gap is widening between active areas such as the vicinity of Shin-Kamagaya Station and dull ones such as the Green Street shopping center.

As an area around Shin-Kamagaya Station was redeveloped, recent five or six years saw the remarkable increase in the numbers of residents and the construction of a shopping mall, a general hospital, and residential areas near the station.

The city with a population of around 109,000 today is located at a traffic hub where three of private railroads (Hokuso Development Railroad, Tobu Noda Line, and Shin-Keisei Line) intersect and you can go to Haneda Airport and Narita Airport in about an hour by train.