《TAIPEI TIMES》 Japanese camera owner to visit in June, say thanks

/ Staff writer, with CNA

A Japanese university student who is the owner of a camera that has been floating in the sea for more than two years and was recently found on a beach in Yilan County is to visit Taiwan in June to thank the finders in person.

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Serina Tsubakihara posted a message in Japanese and English on her Facebook page late on Wednesday in response to the news that her camera had been found by a group of fifth-graders at Yueming Elementary School.

In her message, she explained that she went scuba diving with friends off Ishigaki Island in the summer of 2015, and while she was underwater she accidentally let go of her camera and it floated away.

While Tsubakihara decided to stop looking for her camera when she could not locate it at the scene, there were tens of thousands of netizens looking for her earlier this week.

Park Lee （李公元）, the teacher of the students who found the camera during a routine beach cleanup, on Tuesday posted a Facebook message looking for the owner of the camera, which included some photographs from the camera.

Because the class inferred from the photographs that the owner was probably Japanese, Lee asked a friend to translate the message into Japanese to maximize the exposure.

The post quickly went viral, being shared about 12,000 times on the social media platform, with Representative to Japan Frank Hsieh （謝長廷） even posting about the camera on his own Facebook page.

Tsubakihara, a student at Sophia University in Tokyo, said that she would travel to Taiwan in June to thank Lee and his students in person, and is counting down the days until her trip.

Tsubakihara said she is incredibly impressed that the camera, a black Canon PowerShot G12, seems to still be functional after all this time and is incredibly grateful for everyone’s help.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES