Three members of top Japanese girl band AKB48 yesterday teamed up with the Taipei City Government’s Department of Information and Tourism to promote Taipei as a top destination for the Japanese tourism market.
Haruka Katayama, Maria Abe and Ayaka Kikuchi arrived in the capital on Monday for a four-day trip.
At the department’s invitation, they are visiting top tourism spots around the city, including the Raohe Night Market, the Beitou hot springs and Wanhua District’s (萬華) Bopiliao (剝皮寮) historical area, while shooting a TV travel show that is to be broadcast next month in Japan.
Photo: CNA
The department has budgeted nearly NT$7 million (US$233,100) to produce the show.
Department of Information and Tourism Commissioner Chao Hsin-ping (趙心屏) told a press conference yesterday that the number of Japanese tourists visiting Taiwan increased by 11 percent last year and 93 percent of them had gone to Taipei during their trip.
The city government is aiming to take advantage of the band’s fame to further increase Taipei’s popularity as a tourist destination among Japanese.
“We hope that with the AKB48 members’ introduction, more Japanese visitors will get to know more about Taipei, and visit the city again and again,” she said.
The three band members shot part of the the travel show on Monday, during which they rode U-Bikes form the city’s public bicycle system around Xinyi District (信義).
The show will also feature them trying stinky tofu and other Taiwanese delicacies, and undergoing traditional facial threading treatments in Shilin District (士林).
Abe said it was her first visit to Taiwan and she was impressed with the friendliness and passion of Taipei residents, as well as the delicious cuisine. She said she would encourage other members of AKB48 to visit Taipei.
According to the department, the number of Japanese visiting the nation last year was 1.43 million.
The number of Japanese visiting Taipei has reached 520,000 so far this year and they have spent more than NT$14 billion in the city in this period, government statistics show. More than 40 percent of all Japanese visitors have visited Taipei more than once.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
RSS