Japan Through New Zealand Eyes

We’ve been living in New Zealand for a year and a half, working and travelling around in our van, which is both our means of transportation and our home. We fell totally in love with this kind of travel because we always find ourselves in nature and among people at the same time.

While working and travelling in New Zealand, we meet incredibly interesting and kind people, who we learn a lot from. We wanteed to share their words of advice and stories with other people, so we added a tab on our blog, under which, each week, we publish a story of someone we’ve met while travelling. The people and their stories are diverse and our conversations always take us in a completely different direction. So far, we were told about the life in South Africa, we’ve learned about the best dish in Taiwan, how it was like to traverse New Zealand from its northernmost point all the way to the south, and how all your belongings can amount to mere 5kg, and much more.

This time, we’d like to share the story of Josh from New Zealand. He’s one of the liveliest, funniest and kindest people we’ve met. His story is a blend of New Zealand and Japanese cultures, which make up his unique personality.

“I was born in Japan. Both of my parents were over there teaching English for three years. I was born during their last year and we came back to NZ when I was a one-year-old baby boy. In 2006 when I was 12, me, mom, dad and my two sisters all went back to Japan and lived there for two years. I went to a Japanese school and I did not speak any Japanese, so I had to learn the language very quickly to make friends. Ever since then I just wanted to go back. So, after we moved to New Zealand again, I kept studying Japanese to not forget it, later on I went to university and studied Japanese as well, got a degree and that meant that I could go teach English in Japan on the same teaching program as my parents. I ended up living in a completely different place to where we lived when I was a kid and it was so cool. I lived in Hokkaido, which is the northern most island of Japan and it is a winter wonderland.

I will always miss my friends, more than anything. I have really cool friends in Japan. I also miss my students, my little friends. I miss the food, there are so many different things that you can eat in Japan that originates from there. My favourite dish as a kid was okonomiyaki. It is like a savoury Japanese pancake. I also really like Japanese barbeque – yakiniku. Everyone sits around a small grill; you get plates of raw meat and you cook it yourself. So, you are cooking, drinking beer, talking, having fun. It’s a great experience. Often in Japan they will have tabehodai and omihodai. Tabehodai is all you can eat menu, so you go to a Japanese BBQ place, pay $30 and you can just eat everything on the menu in two hours. Omihodai is the same thing, but for alcohol or drinks. It’s a fun party. It’s very dangerous though when you go for the first time. I had to learn to calm down, you don't have to sit there and drink as many drinks as you can, you can actually just drink normally and it’s fine. The third one is ramen noodles. These ramen noodle shops always have an old man or a lady who started the shop way back and worked there their entire life, it always smells strong in there, its loud and it’s hot, but it is so much fun to sit there and eat your noodles. So, whenever we would go for a night out and would feel hungry at 3 in morning we would go for ramen, it is always open somewhere, which is very different to NZ, where the only place open is McDonald’s.

There are very traditional, old school gender roles in Japan. The women will cook and clean and stay home with the kids, while the father would go to work for really long hours. The work culture is very intense, they are expected to work those big days. For men the job takes priority over the family. Sometimes they don't come home from the job, which is very sad. It is changing, slowly changing like the rest of the world, but it is such an old culture and it is hard to change those kinds of things, I think.

Young people are also very shy while meeting someone they like and don't really know how to deal with everything, so they kind of shield themselves away. All of this is kind of leading to less babies in Japan. Women now are starting to think: »Oh, actually I can have a career!”, so they choose that option and don't end up getting married and having kids.

When I first came back from Japan, I noticed how I always do a mini bow with my head whenever I meet someone, apologize or anything. In Japan that is what you would do instead of a wave, you bow your head. Now I do it without realizing and I have been home for six months now, so that will not go away. Bowing is like a greeting and acknowledging someone and also something. In school, kids are taught to bow when leaving a room, they are used to say thank you to the space or a room they can use. They do all sorts of cool things in Japan. For example, all the kids clean the school together at the end of every day. They would do different things every day, but since everyone is doing it, it only takes about 10–15 minutes. This is their way of respecting the school. They don't even employ cleaners. They only have a groundskeeper, who fixes things and keeps the surroundings tidy. Sometimes the kids would even go out and clean weeds around the school.

The apartments in Japan are way smaller than the ones we are used to here in New Zealand. They are also always surprised when they learn we have our own backyards. They never do, because it is not necessary. They have lots of parks, playgrounds, shared community areas, but nothing like a backyard. Which is what I love about New Zealand, we have so much space here.

From New Zealand to Japan, I would definitely take the love for the outdoors. New Zealand kids would grow up exploring the wilderness, swimming underneath a waterfall and those sorts of things. Not to say that they are not, because obviously there are people that love the outdoors, but there is a lot more kids that would rather be inside and play games. I would love that for Japan, because it would be great for them and I think it would help them solve some of their problems.

The other way around, I wish that we would have all of their restaurants. I really wish that we would have more onsen – natural hot springs. We have some here, but in Japan they are everywhere. Japan is very geothermal, there is a lot of natural hot water, which is very good for your skin. There are lots of wild ones and of course there is also many high-class ones. That is their way to relax, to just sit there and kind of let things go.

My perfect day in Japan would be in Hokkaido in winter. Me and my mates get up and go up the mountain to ski right away. Through the night we just got a meter of fresh powder snow, the mountain is fresh and ready to go. We would have ramen for lunch at the ski field, go to onsen after the whole day of skiing to relax and get warm again and afterwards grab some yakiniku, and to finish it off we would have a few drinks and sing some karaoke, go to bed, and do it all over again. Fun, food, relaxing and singing.

In New Zealand it would probably be: Wake up, pick kiwi fruit, go to sleep. Nah, in New Zealand a perfect day would be something like today. Go to a waterfall, run around the bush barefoot, getting some food from the ocean, cooking it with friends. That's me, that's all I need.”