Japanese singer Mikako Aoki has come to Taiwan to perform a new song, Thanks to Taiwan, to express Japan’s gratitude for Taiwan’s disaster relief assistance in the wake of the March 11, 2011 magnitude 9 earthquake and the ensuing tsunami.
This is Aoki’s first visit and she said she made the trip because she wanted to thank Taiwan by singing the song in Mandarin.
Although she does not speak much Mandarin, she was spent two months practicing the song.
Photo: CNA
After the March 11 disaster, Taiwan donated about US$260 million in aid to Japan, the most by any country.
To express her gratitude for this support, Aoki, who is from Osaka, decided to stage performances in Taiwan, including one on Saturday last week at the Taipei International Travel Fair.
Taiwanese lyricist
The song was composed by a Japanese musician and its lyrics were written by a Taiwanese expatriate who has lived in Japan for more than 30 years.
In the song, which will be
included in her new album to be released next month, Aoki sings: “Thank you. Thank you, Taiwan.”
She says that Taiwan’s helping hand has warmed Japanese hearts on cold, dark nights.
The singer said she felt the warmth of the Taiwanese during her short stay in the country.
Aoki added that she will share her experience with the Japanese public during her weekly radio programs.
In addition to Aoki, two other performers from Osaka, comedians Ryosuke Harada and Kei Minatogawa, also came to Taipei to show their gratitude for the post-disaster assistance.
During a show in Taipei on Sunday, Harada and Minatogawa performed a series of comic sketches.
Taiwanese warmth
“Making Taiwanese laugh is our way of offering something in return for Taiwan’s help,” Harada said.
“We will bring back the warmth we have felt from Taiwanese and share it with Japanese,” he added.
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
Opening-day ticket sales for a horror exhibition at the Tainan Art Museum were suspended twice on Saturday as the show attracted too many visitors. Titled “Ghosts and Hells: The Underworld in Asian art,” the exhibition runs until Oct. 16. It is the local version of a show that debuted at the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. It was planned and curated by Julien Rousseau. The Tainan museum said that within an hour of its doors opening, more than 1,000 people had entered the exhibition. By noon, 3,000 physical and virtual tickets had been sold, while the museum had more than 4,000