The 4th Episode : My first visit abroad
[November, 1982 Hong Kong]
Everything was ready for going abroad.
In November, 1982, I took off from Osaka International Airport. 12 years before Kansai Airport was opened. Beautiful day. I flew over the ocean in emerald green around Okinawa and already must’ve been out of Japan territory, that’s my first experience. It had passed about 4 hours since left Osaka and the aircraft was flying comfortably. The announcement told the passengers we would be arriving at Hong Kong Kai Tak airport shortly.
My first view of the foreign country was the China continent and the islands dotted around. Soon after tall buildings on the Kowloon peninsula came into my eyes. We were flying like going between the buildings and turning to right largely. The largest bank angle? We were of course at higher point than those buildings but the end of the main wing seems about to touch them. Passengers moved their upper body to left saying woooow. Many Japanese names were on the advertisement boards, such as Sony, Hitachi, Citizen, TDK… etc. Worldly well known companies.
Landed at Hong Kong Kai Tak airport with a small impact. Hot air and strange smell covered myself just after getting out of the aircraft. A tour conductor advised us “Over the customs it's a foreign country, that’s different from Japan. Take care of everything as the security is not good. Pickpockets are wearing sneakers to run away easily.”
The protective forces?, police officers?, soldiers? had submachine guns. Never seen before in Japan.
We left the airport terminal building and got into the town. The first foreign country. The advice of the tour conductor remained weirdly in my mind to frighten me chicken hearted more as it’s danger place. People in sneakers looked like pickpockets and got much sweat in my hand holding a camera.
We got on the micro bus for sightseeing. Roads and streets ran to right and left. Hong Kong is a small area but it’s on the end of Eurasia continent so I thought I could walk to Europe.
