Originally Posted by
jinglish
Correct; stopovers are only allowed at gateway cities (i.e., where you're connecting to the partner from AS) and partner hubs. CX, for example, offers a handful of fifth freedom flights from TPE, but AS won't let you book HKG-TPE (stopover)-NGO.
Thank you for the confirmation...even if the information is bad.

If I can ever find space via JAL, that would solve my problem, definitely willing to spend the extra 12.5K miles for a free stop-over in Japan.