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.
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.
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