Japanese students in central Taiwan left in the cold when their school was destroyed in an earthquake in 1999, marked the completion of their new school Friday, thanking those who made the $6 million project possible.
"Now the time has come for us to pay back the kindness that we received," Teruyuki Fukuhara, principal of the Taichung Japanese School, told the audience, which included Japan's top representative to Taiwan, Shintaro Yamashita, Japanese lawmakers and two government officials.
Fukuhara said he hopes the school will become a place where people from Taiwan and Japan "can meet with a smile on their faces" and can feel the warmth that the students received from benefactors from around the world in the wake of the massive quake that hit on Sept. 21, 1999.
The brand-new school complex sits amid paddy fields and banana plantations in Hsiushan, a village about 30 minutes' drive from the central Taiwan city of Taichung.