Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was having lunch with new U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy in Tokyo the same day (Nov. 20) that Susan Rice, national security adviser to President Barack Obama, was announcing in a speech at Georgetown University that Obama would tour Asia next April.

Although Rice did not identify which countries Obama would visit, the Japanese mass media reported on a happy note that Japan would be included in his itinerary.

But they were put off when a U.S. government source said Obama would go to Malaysia and the Philippines, two nations he had planned to visit in October before canceling his attendance at the summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.