Taiwan News
Date: 2017/02/13
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

With the help of a Japanese-speaking police officer, a 75-year-old Japanese man who got lost in Jiufen, New Taipei City, a popular destination among Japanese tourists, was able to unite with his family.

The Japanese man wandered away from his family and a tour guide the other days when they toured Jiufen, police said. As he still remembered they stayed in a hotel not far from Taipei Main Station, he hired a taxi to take him to a police station near the station to ask for help, police said.

However, as the Japanese man can’t speak Chinese or English, police officers at the Jian Cheng substation where the taxi driver dropped him off were at a loss as to what to do next, according to police at the substation. At this juncture, police officer Huang Chien-chia, who speaks fluent Japanese, came up to the old man and began to communicate with him in Japanese, police said. The lost man told Huang about his family and how he got lost.

Finally, police were able to deduce from the situation surrounding the incident that his family would very possibly report his missing at a local police substation in the Jiufen area. Therefore, police at the Jian Cheng substation called police substations in that area one by one, and found that the tour guide left the Japanese family’s contact information and the address of the hotel where they stayed for vacation at the Jiufen police substation, police said. With that lead, police was able to drive the Japanese man to the hotel to unite with his family.    [FULL  STORY]