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In my early 20s, I quit my job in New Zealand and moved to Sydney to study martial arts. In 1982, after competing in the World Pugilist championships in Hong Kong, I hitchhiked around Japan for a month or so, then headed for Korea via ferry in January of 1983. 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.
Her name was Hitomi. We ended up talking on the ferry – I had absolutely no Japanese, and she was learning English as a hobby. 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.
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.
It turned out air fares were expensive in Korea, so Hitomi suggested I come back to Japan and spend some time in Miyazaki, Kyushu, where she lived with her mother. They lived in a valley, surrounded by rice paddies and koi ponds, with no other residences for a kilometre or so. Life was very simple. Hitomi’s mother was amused by me, and treated me well – at the time.
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.
One day we visited Takachiho, a famous mountain gorge. Because of the snow and ice, we decided to spend the night in a local tavern. That night she asked me when I would return home. I told her I was falling in love with her and wanted to stay longer. She said: “Me too!” I had no idea she felt the same way, and was ecstatic. We kissed. It was soft and delicate, just like her.
Eventually my visa ran out and I had to return to Australia. She came as far as Narita to see me off; we kissed forever and I almost missed the plane. We had plans for her to come to Australia as soon as she was able. I wasn’t thinking as far as marriage – this whole affair was completely unexpected for us both– but we were keen to see where it would lead.
As soon as I got back I realised Hitomi was the one. We had the odd phone call – expensive back then, so we primarily communicated through letters, in English. I have no idea how much she understood my writing although I tried to keep it as simple as I could, and I had an enjoyable but often difficult time understanding what she had written. All that mattered was the “love you” at the end.
She was trying hard to come to Australia but her mother was dead against it. So after a year I went back to Japan and hitchhiked down to a business hotel in Kyushu. Hitomi was working late, and I was just waiting in my room for her to arrive. There was a knock on my door. I opened it and she rushed into my arms, and a year’s worth of feelings spilled out. It was not a very romantic place, but I’d already decided I was going to ask her to marry me. And she said yes.
Her mother did not approve. Looking back, I can understand: I was an unknown quantity, a foreigner who was possibly going to take her daughter away. If Hitomi and I were going to be together, I would have to come to Japan.
I went back to Australia to start applying for a visa. Unbeknownst to me, her mother was burning all my letters, and hung up whenever I tried to call.
When I finally arrived back in Japan in 1988, I couldn’t contact Hitomi at all. She’d entered a singing competition, won a recording contract, and was travelling the country as a professional singer. Her manager and mother were blocking my attempts to contact her – their verdict was Hitomi had obligations and I would just complicate things.
This was a gut punch. Knowing I wasn’t welcome in Miyazaki, I stayed in Tokyo, enrolled in Japanese language school, and worked in pubs, pachinko parlours and gyms.
One day a mutual friend called: Hitomi is in Tokyo and wants to meet you. We met at Shinagawa station in a coffee shop. We hadn’t seen each other in years. She had matured, and was as beautiful as ever, with her same sweet voice and manner. By this time, my Japanese was better than her English and she was pleasantly surprised. After that, we rekindled our relationship very quickly. We were madly in love. We were now 30 years old and, according to her mother, no one else was going to marry a woman that old!
In 1990, seven years after we first met on that ferry, we had a wedding ceremony in a beautiful old church in Thames, New Zealand. Hitomi wore a white wedding dress, then later changed into a kimono, which certainly turned heads in my small home town. Hitomi’s mother wore a kimono too – she’d come to accept that we could never be apart. My parents were totally enamoured of Hitomi, and said to me on the day: “If you stuff this up, don’t bother coming home!”
We built a beautiful life together in Japan, with our two sons, and supported each other through thick and thin.
Hitomi passed away three and a half years ago. I consider myself lucky that we were able to find each other again, after so many years apart. We always said it was fate that we boarded that ferry. If we had a choice, we would have married much earlier. For 40 years, I could never take my eyes off her. She was always the most beautiful woman in the room.
