Story of Tiffanie
Having graduated with the highest awards from Taiwan’s private high school, she was accepted into Waseda University in SILS (school of international liberal studies) in Waseda.
She took geisha studies during freshman year first semester and developed a passion for Japanese Kimonos. Initially, she applied for multiple kimono model roles for opportunities in familiarizing herself with the Kimono world.
During summer of freshman year, she sewed her first yukata at the hakubi kimono dressing school and enrolled into kimono dressing courses. She then spent the majority of her spare time and weekends on learning kimono dressing skills. Previously learnt a little japanese in Taiwan and had to reinforce through taking further arbitrary courses during college. However, most japanese friends claim the kimono classes improved her japanese speaking skills abundantly since the kimono sensei did not speak english.
Aside from kimono learning in hakubi, she also was involved with projects supporting the volunteer program Tokyo omotenashi ambassador. The omotenashi ambassador role includes duties such as supporting the event and attract foreigners to experience Japanese culture, and assisting with the translation in English, Chinese and Taiwanese. These events became enjoyable as it was fun to hear different stories from different countries. In addition, transferring the correct kimono knowledge to foreigners was peaceful as they could all embrace, love, and respect the traditional culture
In junior year, she discovered the new-launched kimono-based media called KIMONOBIJIN and immediately contacted the founder of this kimono media platform. She first assisted the founder to do the website translation proofreading in English and Chinese section and discussed/planned the future expansion of function that could be used on the website.
Since the launching of the website’s chinese version in early 2018, she had previously organized two chinese website opening memorial events, Taipei & tainan, half a year ago. In addition, she assisted in the recruiting and interviewing of nearly 100 staff related to makeup, photography, kimono dressing, and volunteers for the opening event while still in Japan and directed through tele-communication.
She managed the budgeting and reporting of expense back to the founder of KIMONOBIJIN, and performed instant translation of Chinese<->Japanese when the founder has the video communication with the temporary staff in Taiwan. As a result of the largely accepted reception to most kimono lover groups in Taiwan, participants within a few promotions of the event were successfully gathered.
After the chinese website opening memorial event in Taiwan, she was invited by the 新世代台日交流会 and become the event director of the 2018 Taiwan night X Japanese festival @ Tokyo.
She assisted in the planning of the Japanese traditional art craft booths and furisode experience booth in the afternoon and the Japesne traditional culture show at night. She also wrote the guidebook on her own and co-designed it with her fellow friend who is currently learning art therapy in London.
In working as the performance’s MC in English at that night, It was the day when the typhoon came and all the public transportation stopped at 8 o’clock sharp. Out of the safety concerns, the show was emergently pushed forward two hours and had limited time for rehearsal. However, she was able to cooperate with all the performers and thank their cooperation. Fortunately, all the performers and volunteer staff could go home safely. She plans on graduating from Waseda’s GSAPS with a master's degree this september.
