Taipei Private Dongshan High School and Kyoto Higashiyama High School students in the stadium at Kyoto Higashiyama High School

The Ministry of Education continues to promote Taiwan’s primary and secondary schools strengthening links with schools overseas and engaging in all kinds of international interactions and exchange activities.

This year, Lin Yu-Jou 林育柔, the Cultural and Educational Affairs Attaché at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Osaka, has been working with the Taiwan Education Center in Japan to facilitate exchanges between schools in Taiwan and schools in Japan which happen to have the same name when the school’s name is written in characters. The first interactions set up were between Higashiyama High School in Kyoto, Japan, and Taipei Private Dongshan High School: each school has the characters ‘東山’—meaning ‘eastern mountain’—in its name.

Shogo Shiokai, the principal of Kyoto Higashiyama High School led a group of 13 students to visit Taipei Private Dongshan High School from March 27 to March 30, and the two schools collaborated to hold a charity sale to support relief efforts for eastern and southern regions of Taiwan that were badly affected by earthquakes in April last year, and in January this year.

Chang Shi-hao 張師豪, the principal of Taipei Private Dongshan High School, led a group of 27 Taipei Private Dongshan High School students to visit Kyoto Higashiyama High School in August. A musical concert was held on August 25, chaired by Kuo Yen-na 郭艶娜, the director of the Taiwan Education Center. After students from each of the schools spoke about their schools in English, the 27 visiting students and 47 of the Kyoto students performed several music pieces. The atmosphere was very lively!

Principal Chang Shi-hao expressed his gratitude for the warm hospitality and guided tours arranged for the visiting students and teachers from Taiwan that made Japan feel like a home away from home and would leave them with wonderful memories. Speaking at the concert, Lin Yu-Jou said she hoped that these two schools will be able to become sister-schools with the same characters for their name and continue working together promoting close international educational exchanges.