Taiwan and Japan have established a new benchmark for the number of visitors traveling between both sides, setting a target of 4 million a year by 2016, Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau said.
Greeted by a video of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, about 200 travel representatives from the two countries set the goal at an annual tourism meeting that took place in Japan’s Mie Prefecture on Friday.
Travel between Taiwan and Japan reached an all-time high last year, with more than 2.99 million visits. About 1.43 million were Japanese tourists traveling to Taiwan, up 10.6 percent from the previous year, according to the bureau’s statistics.
The increase in travelers was a result of an increased number of direct flights and diversified travel packages, the bureau said.
A growing number of innovative tourism campaigns have also contributed to the market, including partnerships between landmark skyscrapers in each country, bureau officials said.
Earlier this month, the Taipei 101 Observatory in the nation’s tallest building and the Tokyo Skytree, the Japanese capital’s highest building, launched a cooperation deal aimed at boosting visitor numbers. Visitors to the Taipei 101 Observatory with an entrance ticket ending in the number 101, or every 634,000th tourist to the Tokyo Skytree, can win souvenirs from both towers.
In April, Taiwan and Japan signed a railway tourism project offering reciprocal train services under a ticket-exchange program.
Cheng Yi-ping (鄭憶萍), section chief at the bureau’s International Travel Division, said there will be more similar initiatives in the near future.
Japan’s NHK Culture Center is to hold a fair in Taiwan in November to enhance cultural understanding between the two nations, while Taiwan’s National Palace Museum is to hold exhibitions in Tokyo and Fukuoka next year, Cheng added.
ALIGNED THINKING: Taiwan and Japan have a mutual interest in trade, culture and engineering, and can work together for stability, Cho Jung-tai said Taiwan and Japan are two like-minded countries willing to work together to form a “safety barrier” in the Indo-Pacific region, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday said at the opening ceremony of the 35th Taiwan-Japan Modern Engineering and Technology Symposium in Taipei. Taiwan and Japan are close geographically and closer emotionally, he added. Citing the overflowing of a barrier lake in the Mataian River (馬太鞍溪) in September, Cho said the submersible water level sensors given by Japan during the disaster helped Taiwan monitor the lake’s water levels more accurately. Japan also provided a lot of vaccines early in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic,
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) on Monday announced light shows and themed traffic lights to welcome fans of South Korean pop group Twice to the port city. The group is to play Kaohsiung on Saturday as part of its “This Is For” world tour. It would be the group’s first performance in Taiwan since its debut 10 years ago. The all-female group consists of five South Koreans, three Japanese and Tainan’s Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜), the first Taiwan-born and raised member of a South Korean girl group. To promote the group’s arrival, the city has been holding a series of events, including a pop-up
TEMPORAL/SPIRITUAL: Beijing’s claim that the next Buddhist leader must come from China is a heavy-handed political maneuver that will fall flat-faced, experts said China’s requirement that the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation to be born in China and approved by Beijing has drawn criticism, with experts at a forum in Taipei yesterday saying that if Beijing were to put forth its own Dalai Lama, the person would not be recognized by the Tibetan Buddhist community. The experts made a remarks at the two-day forum hosted by the Tibet Religious Foundation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama titled: “The Snow Land Forum: Finding Common Ground on Tibet.” China says it has the right to determine the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, as it claims sovereignty over Tibet since ancient times,
Temperatures in some parts of Taiwan are expected to fall sharply to lows of 15°C later this week as seasonal northeasterly winds strengthen, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. It is to be the strongest cold wave to affect northern Taiwan this autumn, while Chiayi County in the southwest and some parts of central Taiwan are likely to also see lower temperatures due to radiational cooling, which occurs under conditions of clear skies, light winds and dry weather, the CWA said. Across Taiwan, temperatures are to fall gradually this week, dropping to 15°C to 16°C in the early hours of Wednesday
RSS