Have I Ever Been To Japan Before?

You Decide

This is not a picture of me in Japan because it is unclear whether I have ever been to Japan. Rather, it is a picture of me on High Junk Peak in the New Territories, Hong Kong, a couple of days before heading (back?) to Japan.

Most people who have been to enough countries to bother maintaining a count have rules for how to include or exclude a place. For example, if your plane touched down in Dubai but you never got off, I think most people would say you can’t count Dubai.

But what if some brief encounter at a far-flung airport turned out to be life-changing? Does that make a difference?

On Friday, I will be flying with my brother David from Hong Kong where he lives, to Sapporo in Japan, which is why the question arises. Have I ever been to Japan before?

Here’s the problem. In 1996, I was covering one of Jean Chrétien’s “Team Canada” expeditions. These were trade missions which included the prime minister and most or all of the provincial premiers, with many businesspeople along for the fun. I was on board for CBC television.

The trip took us to Mumbai and Delhi in India, Islamabad in Pakistan, and then Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. The nature of these trips is that they are interesting because of all the places you go, but exhausting because the prime minister and his penumbra maintain a busy schedule of events, and filing for television can be complicated because of the constant movement, the deadlines half a world away, and the restrictive satellite feed times.

Anyway, on the final day of the trip, I had the idea that after I filed my piece from Kuala Lumpur, I would steal up to the infinity pool on the roof of the hotel and have a dip before we all headed to the airport. But I was exhausted and sadly what I actually did was to sit in the media room and quaff a couple of beers.

At that time, the prime minister’s airplane was an Airbus which had been acquired, if I remember correctly, in a bailout of Canadian Airlines by Chrétien’s predecessor, Brian Mulroney. Unfortunately, it was not very well equipped for international travel because of its inadequate range. On long intercontinental trips, it had to put down frequently to refuel.

When we got to the airport, reporters were delighted to discover that the beer for the flight had all been stored in their section at the back of the plane, which triggered a party that started in K.L. and continued non-stop until we reached our first refuelling stop in Osaka, Japan.

There was an airport in Osaka so brand new that it had not yet been opened to the public or to commercial traffic. It had apparently been offered to the prime minister, however, to refuel his jet. So the seventy or eighty people from the plane, including the prime minister, were freed to wander around this sparkling new and otherwise-deserted facility for an hour or so.

There were paramilitary police guarding the exits. There was still cellophane on the exotic Japanese vending machines. And there was a huge HDTV, something most of us had never seen before, which amazed us with the realism of its images of tropical fish in a tank.

As I rambled aimlessly around, I bumped into a Canadian diplomat named Georgina, whom I had met earlier on the trip. She was walking with a beautiful thirty-something woman with dirty-blond hair and a broad Slavic face (as I thought at the time) whom I had noticed on the trip but had not met. Also a Canadian diplomat, her name was Suzanne.

I was extremely well-lubricated, remember, and so joined Georgina and Suzanne as they drifted along the gleaming corridors making what I must have believed were extremely funny jokes in response to their every observation. By the time we got back on the plane, I was smitten with Suzanne.

There was generally no interaction between those in the diplomats’ section of the plane and the media at the back when we were in the air. The seven or eight hours it took to get to our next refuelling stop, Anchorage, Alaska, gave me time to sober up and reflect on the possibility that my jokes might not have been as hilarious as I had imagined.

When we deplaned at the much more utilitarian U.S. military base at Anchorage, I made a bee-line to where Georgina and Suzanne were sitting. Now hungover, I was in a much more subdued mood, but more goal-directed. We had a pleasant chat, though as I monitored my own contributions in my depleted condition, I felt a degree of concern. As we were called back to the plane, I struck on a desperate gambit: I offered them each my business card—and each of them returned the favour. Score!

When we landed in Ottawa, I got one more chance to talk to Suzanne as we waited for our luggage. She was originally from Montreal, a francophone, and not of Slavic descent as I had surmised, but Hungarian.

As we separated, she said “you can call me if you want”.

Eighteen months later we were married.

So, I ask you, did that hour in Osaka airport count as a visit to Japan?