There is something slightly unsettling about turning 21. Everyone makes such a fuss about it that you start wondering whether you’re supposed to feel different when the number changes. Spoiler: it doesn’t. I’d spent enough time imagining the usual party: a big venue, an even bigger yardie, a hundred-odd people, the 21st key, and remembering halfway through the night that you were supposed to be having fun. Cute, but not really me.
What I really wanted was something that felt less like an event I had to host and more like a story I could keep. Something impulsive, thrilling and a little unhinged. So, I traded the yardie for a stamp on my passport and said ka keets to Ōtepoti for a few days.
Out of Office, Into Tōkyō
Japan had been sitting on my list for years, and turning 21 seemed like a good enough excuse to finally go. The only catch? I’d be going alone, during the semester, for less than a week, to a country where I didn’t speak the language. There was something equal parts thrilling and pretty daunting about the idea of landing in a country where English wasn’t the primary spoken language. I liked that, though. If I were going to do something different, I might as well properly commit to it.
As a small-town girl, touch-down in the city was everything I had imagined and, somehow, nothing like it. I had seen the neon lights, endless streets and thousands of trains that can get you almost anywhere, but seeing it in person was completely different. For a few days, mahi and study could wait. This week, I had swapped my usual rush between classes and work for the bustling technicolour of Tōkyō city.
Wrong Turn, Right Place
Like all good stories, there were plenty of hiccups. My first mistake was not keeping an international charger on hand. While adventures in Japan had topped everyone’s algorithm over the last year or so, my tipihaere was comparatively free-range. That much became clear when I stepped off the plane with a dead phone beyond resuscitation, a charger that didn’t fit the sockets, and a completely digitised transport system to navigate. Some people yearn for this kind of adventure. In my case, this could’ve gone a lot better.
Somehow, I had managed to combine every possible mistake into one very memorable birthday. The revered train system that I had been so excited about, coming from the humble waewae express in Dunedin, blurred into a maze of platforms, signs and people moving with much more confidence than I was. At that point, the scoreboard was simple: Tōkyō 1, Brady 0.
All I had to do was get to Shinjuku, the busiest railway station in the city, but without a working phone, I realised I’d need to rely on my instincts. It wasn’t quite the birthday I had in mind, but if my ancestors could navigate the Pacific Ocean, the largest ocean in the world, surely I could find my way through a foreign city without Google Maps.
After a few wrong turns, I started to get the hang of it. The more I found my way around, the more I realised that the point of the trip was never to have everything figured out, but to see what I could discover when I didn’t. And, as it turned out, there was plenty to discover with an empty stomach.
Table for One, Please
From a potential party of one hundred to a party of one, I had to get comfortable with doing things alone. A party of one felt particularly ironic for a 21st, but I’d chosen the guest list and, frankly, she was pretty good company. And like in most places, kai quickly became the easiest way to make a strange place feel familiar. I’d arrived with a list of things I wanted to try and quickly abandoned any attempt at sticking to it. Why follow an itinerary when there are convenience stores, ramen shops and sushi trains waiting around every corner? Sometimes kai doesn’t need translating. Trust, bottomless sushi can bridge any language gap.
There was something comforting about being able to walk into a 7-ELEVEN, pick up something that looked good, and just give it a go based purely on blind faith. I didn’t need to know exactly what I was getting every time. Most times, trusting the pictures and the process was good enough. I hadn’t come all this way to be picky. It was here that I began to truly embrace curiosity over sure certainty. I was learning in real time that growing up wasn’t about having it all figured out. Sometimes you just need to stop overthinking and order the mystery meal.
Lost in Translation
I realised pretty quickly that kia ora wasn't going to get me very far in Japan. Neither was confidently nodding at a sign and hoping for the best. At home, communication is something we rarely have to think about. You know how to ask for directions, read menus, order kai and understand the social cues that make everyday interactions run smoothly. But you don’t realise how much you rely on it all until you’re dropped somewhere that none of it comes automatically.
In Tōkyō, I was the one trying to keep up with it all: gestures, expressions, translating in real time and learning a handful of Japanese phrases just to get by. Even the very simplest of interactions required far more concentration. Saying thank you wasn’t just a “ngā mihi” here, but a layered gesture that commands not only intention, but eye contact and a particular bow.
There were moments when the language itself felt eerily familiar, too. Japanese and te reo Māori are completely different languages, yet they share five basic vowel sounds, clear pronunciation and a plethora of words that move in open, vowel-heavy syllables. Their arigatō and tabemono, compared with our tamariki and tangata, could easily collide – different meanings and histories, but a rhythm my ear recognised. Their hai, meaning yes, mirrored our own āe. Our awa, for river, was their kawa. For both of us, ika referred to a different sea creature, as did kōura, referring to the crayfish. Perhaps they were only small linguistic coincidences, but after travelling eighteen hours to get there, they felt like threads of home. Who would think that, in a completely different time zone, in a different hemisphere, on a different continent, te reo Māori could still manage to close some of the distance between us?
Maybe that was the thing about travelling so far from home: it made me notice how much of it goes with you.
Short Stop, Long Story
Most people spend their 21st surrounded by friends, drinks and the inevitably unfortunate camera roll evidence. I spent mine two flights away from home, dragging a suitcase through a foreign city with no clue of where I was going. There were wrong trains, colourful financial decisions and some seriously good kai. I guess I got my birthday wish after all – a birthday that felt like an escape, not an expectation. So I booked the flight, figured the rest out, and made it home with a passport stamp and a story, and way too many new outfits. And just like that, I’m finally 21 – definitely older, a little street-wiser, and with a suitcase considerably fuller than when I left. No yardie hangover required.
