VLADIVOSTOK, July 25 (Itar-Tass) —— Russia’s Far Eastern port city of Nakhodka and Japan’s Kyoto Prefecture on Monday will sign a memorandum on economic, tourist, and naval ties, a spokesman for the Nakhodka administration told Itar-Tass.
The official signing ceremony will be held in Nakhodka’ s International Maritime Club. The document will be signed by Keiji Yamada, the governor of the Kyodo Prefecture, and Oleg Kolyadin, the mayor of Nakhodka.
Fifty years ago, the Japanese port city of Maizuru in the Kyodo Prefecture became a sister city of Russia’s Nakhodka. The memorandum has the following passage: “navigation along the Nakhodka-Maizuru route in the past fifty years has benefited trade relations between the two port cities.” The memorandum further says that Nakhodka and the Kyodo Prefecture will take effort to organize permanent RoRo, or roll on/roll off shipment lines (using vessels designed to carry wheeled cargo that are driven on and off the ship on their own wheels).
The document also says that the Russian city and the Japanese prefecture are set to develop tourist ties and are committed to do their best to organize passenger communication between Maizuru and Nakhodka.
The memorandum has been elaborated since January 2011, when a delegation from the Kyodo Prefecture visited Nakhodka.