Chapter 1: Sayonara, Tokyo! Helloooo, New Zealand!!

I am here!! New Zealand! Aotearoa! Down Under! The Southern Hemisphere! I can see the Southern Cross and it is WINTER!


How did I get here? How did I get so far away from my family and friends? I've never stopped wondering how my life seems to take these random twists and turns. I guess I've never been a person (to my sometimes chagrin) who sets a specific goal in my future and careens toward it with the steadfast persistence and determination that distinguishes Achievers from us Wanderers. Instead, I take scenic routes, blundering detours, and in my wanderings, choose little goals that materialize like little ridges formed by sudden earthquakes. I set out for these with the awareness that my fickle feet might veer off in search of a rest stop with donuts. In my darker days, I despair at my inability to commit to something bigger, something that challenges me to put down roots and gain sustenance from delving deeper. In my more positive moments, I smile at my colorful Collection of Random Experiences and am grateful for the fact that Complacency and Boredom have not been my complaints in life.

When I met M, the idea of moving to New Zealand materialized out of nowhere a few months into our relationship and in our talks about the future. At that point, my future was a pretty foggy landscape, with hazy glimpses of graduate school and other ideas flickering in the distance. Then, while I was floating along, I bumped into M and toppled head over heels when his answer to my occasional Life's Despair was, "What's deeper than collecting experiences?".

He asked me what I thought of going home with him and I blinked and there it was! This bright little island emerged out of the fog and I thought, "Of course! Why not?" The haze lifted and my road map rearranged itself. After that, in the months to come, all paths led to New Zealand, my Emerald City.

I had imagined and anticipated flying into Auckland so many times in my last few months in Tokyo that the actual experience felt almost reassuring. The flight itself had been a bit of a nightmare, as I had developed some sort of intestinal bug (maybe all the Tequila?) and was spending a lot of time hanging out in the bathroom aisle, looking like the Girl Who Obviously Has Diarrhea. When it came time to land, though, I looked down at the bright, emerald island below me and it all felt a bit like--"Yes, of course. Of course this is what landing in New Zealand would be like." All the pieced together photos and movie images that I had in my mind were exactly this--green, lush, beautiful.

The Greenness of New Zealand immediately stood out to me like the neon lights of Tokyo, but in a very different way. Where Shibuya and Shinjuku are awe-inspiring in their own right...the bright, blinding, flashing lights always felt like a continual date rape of my senses. I was being struck, slapped, my face clamped between two neon-bright hands and forced to look up and around until my eyes glazed over. But the Green that carpets the hills, the valleys, the fields all around you here in New Zealand--you just willingly drink it in. It's an intensity and brilliance of Green I haven't quite experienced before, and everything else seems a bit like an accessory to it. It is a living Green secure in its awareness that it has more right to be here than you do.

It's like a Green Smoothie for your senses--soothing, nourishing, delicious! I don't think I could ever tire of it. I really was in awe. Still am.


After life in Tokyo, however, there are times I don't realize I am in a foreign country. Everyone speaks English--albeit in funny accents (yep, I'm the only one who talks normally here.) I can read the signs. White people are the majority again. People eat sandwiches and roasts. The cafes are dark and cozy. Walking around Auckland on my first day in New Zealand, I almost felt like I was back home in Seattle from time to time. But the differences do strike me every day, and I find myself getting that Wide-Eyed Tourist feeling just like I do in any other foreign country...and that foolish Dumb Tourist feeling too.

M took me to the pharmacy the first day to look for tummy meds, and of course none of the brands looked familiar. I found soon enough that the people who work at the pharmacies here are really friendly and come up and ask you point blank, "How you goin'? Can I help you find anything?" "No--just looking." I was about to say...but my ever helpful Kiwi boyfriend answered, "She needs something for DIARRHEA." And so the friendly pharmacist led me over and showed me a colorful shelf of diarrhea meds, plucked one off and said "This is really good."

"Hmmmm." I said, trying to be a shrewd shopper. "What's the difference between this one and this one?"

"Well, this one is better if you have problems with...uh...wind, too." she said.

My ever helpful Kiwi boyfriend looked at me and asked, "Do you have problems with wind, baby?"

They both looked at me, waiting.

I went for the one with wind action. More for your money.

Going out to eat was not as smooth sailing as I thought, either. Ordering a coffee was, at first, a bit of a conundrum as the Coffee Menu listed drinks I had never heard of before. "What is a short black?" I wondered. "What's a flat white?" At a cafe, a nice waitress asked me what I wanted to drink and I found myself stammering, "I'll have uh...a um...what do you call coffee in this country again?"

Paying for things by cash, I find myself having to stare hard at each coin to figure out how much it is worth before handing them one by one to the quizzical cashier. But mostly, my boyfriend M told me, people pay with an EFTPOS card here.

"Oh, okay." I answered. Naturally. An iff-poss card. Gotta get me an iffposs card. (And I did. It's just a debit card.)


I was only in Auckland for a couple days, and much of that was spent recuperating from an intense month of good-byes and packing in Tokyo. I had barely caught up on sleep before we were on a plane to Wellington, at the southern tip of the North Island. This is where M and I planned to live, and we had nothing but our suitcases with which to start our new life.

And what a start! As luck would have it, we were on the same plane as a few rugby heroes from some Under-21 rugby team on their way home after winning some important game (for rugby fans: that is all the detail I can muster, sorry). As M and I walked towards the baggage claim area, we were suddenly greeted by a group of young but hugely fit high school boys who shouted and slapped their knees and launched into a Haka performance.

Haka--for those only slightly more ignorant than me of New Zealand culture, is a traditional Maori dance. According to Wiki, Haka are performed for a variety of occasions, but in particular, the War Haka is what has been made famous by the New Zealand rugby team, the All Blacks. I'd seen Haka on TV before, but Live--it is a completely different experience. Much like how theater and dance performances lose their vitality on film, the Haka you see on TV is nothing like a Haka performed literally 10 feet away from you. The power of their performance hits you like a vibration of sound and energy. It's like a thunder cloud of human force. I couldn't help but think that--with any less passion or force--the Haka could look almost silly, almost embarrassing. And apparently, when the All Blacks first started doing it (before someone set them straight), it WAS silly and embarrassing. But there is something magical about the energy that human beings can conjure through feeling--and how artists learn to harness that in their performances. Movement isn't simply movement. In Theater, we learned that a walk on stage is never simply a walk. The same gestures can be communicated in so many different ways. When those boys opened their eyes wide and stuck out their tongues, it wasn't at all like little kids being naughty. It was grotesque and terrifying and awesome all at once.

After they finished, we met M's cousin T on the other side and she said, "Well, that was quite a welcome to Wellington!"

Though I knew the Haka wasn't for me, but for the returning players on our plane--it felt a bit like my own welcome too.