Taiwan opened a representative office in Sapporo yesterday, its first new representative office in Japan in 30 years.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) described the opening of the office as a “breakthrough in Japan-Taiwan relations.”
Wang, along with dignitaries from Japan and Taiwan, attended a ceremony marking the opening of the office, the first since a representative office was opened in Yokohama in 1979.
PHOTO: CNA
Wang said the move was a promising development in bilateral ties and would be “a shot in the arm for tourism exchanges.”
He said that since relatively few residents of Hokkaido, of which Sapporo is the capital city, visited Taiwan, he hoped the opening of the Sapporo office would help encourage more people from the northern Japanese island to vacation in Taiwan.
“The hospitable Taiwanese people welcome Japanese visitors with open arms,” Wang said.
Addressing the ceremony, Hokkaido Governor Harumi Takahashi said Taiwan is very important to Hokkaido in terms of tourism.
“The opening of the Taiwan office in Sapporo will help facilitate Taiwanese tourists’ visits here and further bolster bilateral exchanges,” she said.
She said authorities from Hokkaido’s Kushiro sub-prefecture would give a pair of Japanese-bred red-crowned cranes to the Taipei Zoo as a token of friendship.
Shinichi Sakamoto, head of a Hokkaido tourism organization, said his organization would cooperate more closely with Taiwan’s office in Sapporo to get more people in Hokkaido interested in sightseeing in Taiwan.
Sakamoto said he believed most Hokkaido residents who had visited Taiwan would be happy to repeat their trips there, attracted by Taiwan’s delicious food, good tea and convenient high-speed railway system.
Also attending the opening were Taiwan’s top representative to Japan, John Feng (馮寄台), and Atsushi Hatanaka, chairman of the Japan Interchange Association, the de facto Japanese embassy authorized to handle civilian exchanges with Taiwan in the absence of formal diplomatic relations.
The Sapporo office is the sixth Taiwanese liaison office established in Japan, after offices in Tokyo, Osaka, Okinawa, Fukuoka and Yokohama.
Seven of the 17 NT$10 million (US$311,604) winning receipts from the November-December uniform invoice lottery remain unclaimed as of today, the Ministry of Finance said, urging winners to redeem their prizes by May 5. The reminder comes ahead of the release of the winning numbers for the January-February lottery tomorrow. Among the unclaimed receipts was one for a NT$173 phone bill in Keelung, while others were for a NT$5,913 purchase at Costco in Taipei's Neihu District (內湖), a NT$49 purchase at a FamilyMart in New Taipei City's Tamsui District (淡水), and a NT$500 purchase at a tea shop in New Taipei City's
Taiwanese officials were shown the first of 66 F-16V fighter jets purchased by Taiwan from the United States, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday, adding the aircraft has completed an initial flight test and is expected to be delivered later this year. A delegation led by Deputy Minister of National Defense Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉) visited Lockheed Martin’s F-16 C/D Block 70 (also known as F-16V) assembly line in South Carolina on March 16 to view the aircraft. The jet will undergo a final acceptance flight in the US before being delivered to Taiwan, the
Deliveries of delayed F-16V jets are expected to begin in September, Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said today, after senior defense officials visited the US last week. The US in 2019 approved a US$8 billion sale of Lockheed Martin F-16 jets to Taiwan, a deal that would take the nation’s F-16 fleet to more than 200 jets, but the project has been hit by issues including software problems. Koo appeared today before a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, which is discussing different versions of the special defense budget this week. The committee is questioning officials today,
TALENT SCOUTING: The university is investing substantial funds in its future to bring in the kind of researchers that would keep the college internationally competitive National Taiwan University (NTU) plans to invest NT$2 billion (US$62.6 million) to launch two programs aimed at attracting and retaining top research talent, university president Chen Wen-chang (陳文章) said yesterday. The funding would support the “Palm Grove Scholars Project,” which targets academics aged 40 to 55. Up to 20 scholars would be selected, each receiving as much as NT$10 million annually, Chen said. The initiative is designed to attract leading researchers to Taiwan and strengthen NTU’s global competitiveness by fostering a more research-friendly environment and expanding international collaboration, he said. NTU is also introducing a “Hong Hu” chair grant, which would provide Palm
RSS