By kokorozashi dou Akiko

Ten years ago, I moved from Chiba-ken Ken Japan to Taichung City. In the beginning, I saw the wider roads, motorcycles everywhere, big and beautiful parks, the slow pace lifestyle of people, the food stands with delicious smells (sometimes the smell stinks) and traditional market places co-exists existing with modern department stores. The mixture of old and new is was my first impression for of Taichung City. Since then, I have started my Japanese teaching career. My clients included the students of normal language learning institutes (the foreign language center), the employees of the police station(station (the foreign affairs policemen), companies, factories and tea houses, ..etc. And tThe friends who spoke Japanese with strange accents telling told me, “I want to learn how to speak Japanese fluently.”. Now, most of the students have improved their Japanese. However, my Chinese did not improve in the past decade. I have had to ask them to help me to survive in Taichung City.

I got married in Taichung City afterwards,. myMy husband was one of the people who helped me a lot. According to my plan in the beginning, I just wanted to spend one year in Taichung and return to Japan., Not as I expected, I have stayed in Taichung City for such long time.

The most impressed impressing image of Taichung City is the “tea houses” and “massage shops”. Regarding the tea, I have been teaching Japanese in some a tea house called “The Wu-Wei HutWei Hut”, located in on Kung-yi Yi Road. I drank my first cup of Taiwanese Oolong tea with the sweet tea deserts. Even Uuntil today, I still cannot forget the taste of the tea. I always take Taiwan teas as gifts back to my home in Japan.

I love massage. As I know, there are various ways for massage. I am fascinated with the feeling mixed up feeling with of pain and comfort, therefore I go to foot massage often. When I am tired, I usually fall into asleep often when I took get a foot massage. Foot massage has much improved my congenital defects, such as liable for flu and vulnerable for diseases.

I believe there are yet many interesting things awaiting me my to discovery in Taichung City. What will happen to me? I do really look forward to them. I love the city’s with nice climate and friendly people. I think I will live in Taichung for the rest of my life.