Leaving Kiwi
The cheerful young man handed me the vial and gestured towards a row of meticulously constructed cardboard booths. Not long out of working on the New Zealand election, I could even imagine how these would have been made. No box ticking for Jacinda, Winston, Crusher Collins or even cannabis here though. I followed my wife across to what I’d mentally monikered the ‘spitting station’, entered my own booth and settled my carry-on against the wall. Removed my face mask and smiled at the illustrated instructions taped to the wall. Five millilitres of saliva had rarely come with such difficulty. But at least nobody was shoving a cotton bud up my nose.
Flashback to the previous Tuesday and that stinging sensation at a medical centre had signalled the beginning of our Wellington stay’s end. The results had come within 24 hours. We were at the airport within 48, having a last Fortune Favours but eschewing any food as we could ‘always get something in Auckland’. No dice for Ugly Bagel and Gorilla Burgers then – though I remembered there was one of the former in Auckland. Soon enough it would be hello to pork cutlet on rice and bento boxes. As quarantine turned out, lots of bento boxes.
The domestic terminal had shown that travel in country was returning to a relative norm for New Zealand. But what this out-of-practice traveler hadn’t figured out yet was what the international terminal would be like. Happy enough to have got our bags checked through to Narita, the walk from domestic to international terminals – with not a sinner on the road – was the first indication that our tactics regarding food were foolhardy at best. My wife reminded me that her friend – who hadn’t been in New Zealand since February – had said there’d be new restaurants open now. I suppose that had at least in part got me thinking that things were somewhat normal. I strolled into the cavernous, near empty terminal building. Eyed the row upon row of empty check-in desks. Wondered again at the decision to leave a country with virtually no COVID cases. Kiwis weren’t travelling. But then I wasn’t a Kiwi. And any country without work can be an unforgiving place. I saw a few lines of travelers in the middle-distance. Strolled on a little further and examined the uncluttered departure board.
Ten or so flights in the next 24 hours. A flight and two weeks in quarantine at the end of it was probably not too palatable for even the most intrepid traveller unless it was needed. Only a few hundred people meant the economics of having any food options pretty unlikely. So no Ugly Bagel or much else then. We considered the empty concourse, the one place now closing which was thumping out Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall. Sat down across from an empty KFC and considered what an empty airport said about the state of travel. Too late now, we strolled through departures, had our baggage scanned and passports checked. There was one bar where you could get a heated sandwich (or the crisps which we still had in my bag) and a few Steinlagers on tap and watch Champions League highlights. A few shops where staff hustled for any sales. We’d eat properly on the plane. Our three years in New Zealand were done. So long and thanks for all the clean air, cheerfulness and beetroot.
The plane seemed about a half-full. Students, teachers, business people, a gaggle of Rising Sun returnees and about fifty men facing the eye-watering itinerary of the Philippines via Narita. The food was fine – Air New Zealand fare usually is – and the service was halting but solid. The entertainment flickered as a monument to how little has been released cinematically this year. I watched the old version of Westworld, read a few pages of Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind and caught fifteen to forty-minute cat naps between bouts of Solitaire. My wife took advantage of the empty seat beside her to stretch out for some proper shut-eye. Her being the one with responsibility for the paperwork, I figured that was a fair cop. We’d be landing soon enough even if the plane on the screen ahead of me did seem loathe to shift towards the equator and beyond. Around 2am Wellington time I saw a near full moon out the window to my left. The sun glinted through the windows to my right about three hours later. I spun my wristwatch back four hours and thought about what lay ahead on landing. There would be documents. Another COVID test and lots of sitting and waiting.
Inside Narita airspace we were informed that those terminating in Tokyo would be last off the flight. We landed with the mildest of bumps and watched as the Filipinos collected their carry-ons – including one HDTV television – and trudged off the plane, another flight ahead. My wife, freshly rested, murmured something about not fancying further transit. I remembered friends from Colombia that had recently completed a forty-plus hour trip to get home. In comparison, this slingshot from Auckland to just outside Tokyo was child’s play. Finally we were summoned and shepherded to two rows of plastic chairs just outside the exit gate. From there we were funnelled in groups of ten to the documentation desk.
Our documents were muttered about, puzzled over, at one point raised to the light to check for authenticity. We waited, I inwardly bobbing up and down on the balls of my feet as my mind conjured worst case scenarios involving regretful tuttings and a repatriation flight to Heathrow and BoJo’s madcap COVID party. Finally the documents were deemed adequate/appropriate and we were waved onwards. I could see a young woman bow in the distance, her left hand pointing outward to the turn in the concourse as we approached. Then that cheerful young man handing out funnelled vials. Then the spitting booth.
What followed was another hour of questioned prompts and concept checking which would have made an ESL teacher on their mid-contract lesson observation proud. Distance appropriate queueing and answering. Distance appropriate sitting. More queues. More answers. A kid named Charlie who desperately wanted to play outside – one sympathised – while his long-suffering mother adopted the 1,000 yard stare common to an angst-addled liberal avoiding a discussion with an elderly relative about a racist Facebook link. We heard running feet at one point as a desperately serious young man chased us down to retrieve two plastic files that had the quarantine mascot’s sticker attached. Often in our Narita journey we saw no-one in sight either ahead of us or behind. When we finally exited the sliding doors to our new reality, it was to a concourse similarly populated to the Auckland one. We sat and waited for the quarantine bus to bring us to our hotel, sharing a tuna sandwich which said plenty about how little that aspect of food preparation had developed since we’d left in 2007. Our final Kiwi experience, for now at least, was the cheerful bloke in shorts and a puffer jacket who left his suitcases on the pavement and wandered off looking for food. My London training meant I kept an eye on them until he returned. I didn’t need to. There were few enough people around to worry about theft anyway. And anyway, this is Japan. Stealing is impolite.
Sartre wrote that hell is other people but I wonder if he considered carefully enough the accompanying paperwork. Yet by the end of the Narita airport experience, I still didn’t have a respiratory infection and I did now have my foreigner residence card for the next three years. For now, I can leave the hotel room to buy groceries or drop into a local restaurant to collect takeout. I can eat in the hotel restaurant along with my COVID peeps or sit in the lobby and listen to a violinist recite passable renditions of classics I am not musically literate enough to name. The mask itches enough to make me strongly consider shaving, but in a country where everyone is wearing one I can handle a little discomfort. Nobody has crossed the street to avoid us or screamed at us to get the hell out of their store yet. There’s thirteen more days for that, but sitting at my hotel window I am on the other side now and thinking the right decision has been made. I will miss the walks along the wharf, the craft beers and chat in Hashigo Zake, the near serenity of life in a city where everything was fine until pandemics, lockdowns and a stuttering economy meant things weren’t. It was this move or berry picking. And twenty years in teaching has left me with hands accustomed to picking books from shelves.
