"I'd heard air fares were cheap from Korea. No internet back then! While boarding, I was approached by a very attractive Japanese woman, with limited English, who told me that if I bought one box of bananas and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black label, I could pay for most of my trip in Korea. These items were very much in demand back then."
"She and her friend were travelling to Korea to buy clothes and accessories to sell in Japan. I didn't know anything about Korea, so she suggested we travel together. Hitomi and Kerry Cox in Tokyo circa 1990 We stayed in Busan for a week, then in Seoul for another. Together, we'd visit local temples or Busan Tower. We'd just met I didn't think there were any romantic feelings."
"Hitomi and I spent a lot of time traveling around Kyushu, visiting older people living on their own, others living with disabilities. She would often bring small gifts. I was becoming very attracted to her kindness, her always-cheerful personality, her lilting voice and laugh. She was beautiful on the inside and out. One local told me they thought she was an angel."
In the early 1980s the narrator left New Zealand and moved to Sydney to study martial arts, then hitchhiked around Japan and traveled to Korea by ferry in January 1983. While boarding the ferry the narrator met Hitomi, a Japanese woman with limited English, and they traveled together through Busan and Seoul. Air fares proved expensive, so the narrator returned with Hitomi to her home in Miyazaki, Kyushu, where she lived with her mother in a quiet valley surrounded by rice paddies and koi ponds. They traveled around Kyushu visiting isolated and disabled elders; the narrator grew increasingly attracted to Hitomi's kindness, cheerful personality, and inner beauty. One snowy visit to Takachiho led them to spend the night in a local tavern.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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