The town of Mugi is located on the southern coast of Tokushima Prefecture in Shikoku, Japan. It became sister towns with Puyan Township in Changhua County on July 22, 1983. The agreement came about due to increased ties between the two townships after a Taiwanese doctor from Puyan opened a clinic in Mugi in 1983. Though the towns’ mayors exchanged visits in 1988, more than twenty years passed with no further contact after Mugi provided aid to Taiwan after the September 21 Earthquake in 1999.
A girl named Monica Hsu (徐妙弦) from Changhua County received a Master/Ph.D. Degree study-abroad loan from the Changhua County Government in 2019 and is now studying for a Global MBA in Innovation Management at Hosei University in Japan. In mid-January this year, she was assigned as an intern to the Regional Revitalization Department of South District Administration Bureau (Minami Office) in Tokushima Prefecture. While researching Tokushima before her internship, Hsu discovered the past link between Puyan Township in Changhua County and Mugi Township in Tokushima. When she returned to Taiwan during her Christmas and Japanese New Year holidays last year, she made a pilgrimage to Shunze Temple in Puyan and received a blessed cap. She also told the story of Gustav Iden to her department director and supervisors. At the end of her internship, Regional Revitalization Department Director Koichi Kusaka (日下浩一) arranged for her to meet with Mugi Mayor Osamu Masutomi (枡富治). She presented the mayor with the blessed cap and tourism pamphlet for Changhua County, and told him that she was glad to revive the link between the two towns. She also hoped that it will become an enduring friendship as he will always be welcome in Changhua.
During her internship, Hsu not only helped make suggestions on regional revitalization in Tokushima but also promoted the tourist destinations and culture of Changhua, her hometown. She was instrumental in enabling mutual exchanges between their respective websites. The link for the Japanese version of Changhua’s tourism information website was added to the “The Lower Right of Shikoku” website (https://shikokunomigishita.jp/), while the link to the Chinese version of Discover Tokushima website was added to the “Travel in Changhua” website (https://tourism.chcg.gov.tw/) to help promote mutual tourism.
Hsu also expressed her gratitude to the Changhua County Government as its study-abroad loan gave her the opportunity to fulfill her dream in Japan. She was particularly delighted to have the opportunity to give the Japanese people another channel for learning about Changhua. She will continue to promote Changhua in Japan if the opportunity offers itself so that more people from Japan can learn about Changhua and travel to Changhua.


Links on their respective websites:
Japanese version of Travel in Changhua website (https://tourism.chcg.gov.tw/index.aspx?l=JP)
Linked by Tokushima Prefecture’s “The Lower Right of Shikoku” website (https://shikokunomigishita.jp/)
Chinese version of Discover Tokushima website (https://discovertokushima.net/tw/)
Linked by “Travel in Changhua” website (https://tourism.chcg.gov.tw/)