The annual quota for young people joining the Taiwan-Japan working holiday program is to be doubled from next month, the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association said yesterday.
The association, which represents Japanese interests in Taiwan in the absence of formal diplomatic ties, made the remarks at a news conference in Taipei to mark the 10th anniversary of the program.
Taiwan-Japan Relations Association President Chiou I-jen (邱義仁) said that Taiwan is grateful for the Japanese government and the Japanese association’s decision to boost the quota to 10,000 for each side.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The program enhances genuine cultural understanding between the two nations by giving young Taiwanese first-hand experience of living and working in Japan, Chiou said.
Meanwhile, Taiwan should improve its attractiveness to visitors, as the quota of 5,000 young Japanese is not being filled, he said.
Launched in 2009, the program is open to people from either side aged 18 to 30. The annual quota in 2014 was increased from 2,000 to 5,000 for each side.
The Japanese government said 8,436 Taiwanese last year applied to visit Japan under the program.
Kazuhiro Jinpei, who visited Taiwan through the program in 2015, said he did not speak Chinese at the time and had never been outside of Japan previously.
“I admire the optimism and the spirit among young people in Taiwan to confront challenges,” he said, adding that his time in Taiwan gave him a deeper understanding of the cultures of both sides.
“I hope more Taiwanese and Japanese take advantage of the working holiday program to understand each other’s cultures,” he said. “They should just do it and not worry.”
Wang Wen-hsuan (王文萱), a Taiwanese woman who has lived in Japan for a decade, said Taiwanese interested in the program should not deny their heritage.
“I would ask them to combine the good things they learn in a foreign culture with that of their own,” Wang said. “With this attitude, they will find success in work and life.”
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS