Te Haerenga Tuarua - Haere ki Nippon

My flight from Tamaki Makaura to Osaka was packed to the nines with non-English speaking people. Just as I was anticipating a long flight staring at my toes, a nice Japanese girl who had studied English in Christchurch sat next to me. Her name was Yugi, and she was sad because she had to leave her boyfriend behind in Aotearoa. Hard man eh Winston Peters...

Was good to have someone to chat to, we even had some Lindauer. I was doing some drawings for my whaiaipo and Wes, and the flight attendants were getting interested. Particularly in the whale bone heitiki of Koros I was drawing. This one flight attendant fulla got chatting with me about the Derek Lardelli designed uniforms they were wearing. He went and scored this book explaining the designs, and in particular the panel on their shirts:

“Tini whetu ki te rangi,
tini ika ki te moana,
tini tangata ki te whenua...”

I can't remember the rest, but it's good stuff.

The first country I got to see outside of Aotearoa was Noumea. That was a bit of a buzz for me. The first country I stepped foot on was Japan. When I got to Osaka Kansai airport Wes was there waiting to pick me up. Fulla was fretting cos he got there a bit late, and my plane was nowhere to be seen. An internal affairs officer even hit him up for ID!