The number of Taiwanese travelers booking hotel rooms in Japan for this year’s Lunar New Year holiday has increased threefold compared with last year, said Rakuten Travel, the tourism division of the Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten.
The number of hotel reservations made by Taiwanese for the spring holiday season has increased by 324.8 percent from the same period last year, the company said, adding that Taiwanese have made the most of reservations in Japan, surpassing visitors from Hong Kong, Thailand, China and Singapore.
For the second year in a row, Hokkaido has seen the largest increase in the number of Taiwanese visitors, with hotel reservations for this year’s Lunar New Year growing by 157.1 percent from last year, the company said.
Hokkaido’s Sapporo Snow Festival and the opening of the first stage of the Hokkaido Shinkansen high-speed rail in March are likely to boost the number of Taiwanese and Japanese tourists in the region, Rakuten said.
Demand for hotel rooms in Hokkaido Prefecture’s capital, Sapporo, prior to the snow festival appeared to have spilled over to cities at the prefecture’s outskirts, the company said, adding that reservations in Noboribetsu and Hakodate this year have increased by 376.9 percent from last year.
TransAsia Airways announced that it is to increase the number of weekly flights from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to Sapporo, Asahikawa and Hakodate to 14 from seven and that the number of seats are to be increased by replacing the single-aisle jets with Airbus A330 planes, which have a capacity of 300 passengers.
EVA Airways said that it has 22 weekly flights from Taoyuan to Sapporo, Asahikawa and Hakodate, with a typical seat occupancy of 80 percent that rises to as high as 90 percent during holiday seasons.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai
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