New Zealand Adventure- Day 2 Museum and Mt. Eden

Since I'd had a long flight, I slept very well that night. It was really "GOOD morning" when I got up.

On my second day, I decided to follow my travel habit; to go to museum firstly. Wherever I go, the first place to visit is the place's museum to get close to its local culture. My travel isn't tourism but more "journey" to touch something different. To me, museum is a juke box letting me take a look at the local culture and ask anything to curators.

Following this habit, I walked to Auckland museum located in Auckland Domain-a public park. After 40-minute walk, I got to the museum's main entrance and I was overwhelmed at the building.. It looks a palace! Certainly, New Zealand is under British commonwealth, so there is no palace for royal somebody to live, but it looks like a palace on a hill. How wonderful it looks.


Getting inside, there is a huge hall and foyer, and the reception desks are placed in its front. I approached to one of the desks for a ticket. The admission costs $25 per adult and I have to admit that it was a little bit higher than my expectation. That said, I really wanted to go inside so I tried to buy a ticket. Reacting to my "One adult ticket please" request, the reception woman asked me if I join the Maori performance. She explained that the museum has a performance program for visitor, in which Maori people perform its traditional dance and songs in a mini theater inside. If I take it, the fee would go up to $45 per person, but I accepted her recommendation as I thought it was such a nice chance to touch something different directly.

I was said to wait in the foyer until Maori dancers comes and picks me up to the theater. 15 minutes passed and they came. They wore the tribe's traditional outfits and invited the audience including me to the theater. After several introductions, the performance started.

Throughout their performances and instructions, I found that their dances and songs were very correlated to the tribe's traditional way of life. Some actions show us how the Maori fighters fight against enemy or hunt the animals for their foods, and songs are their way to appreciate the foods. Now we saw them a great performance but it was just their life in the tribe's society.

After the performance, I walked in the museum to enjoy its exhibitions from Maori cultures to British influences, and I was stunned at sight of Japan's zero fighter plane used in WW II. The instruction attached to the exhibition says that some Japanese soldiers made a crash landing on the ocean nearby New Zealand after they failed an attack to US army somewhere in the pacific ocean. The soldiers was fated to have a Kamikaze attack (suicide bomber) onto US' mother ships but they were attacked before they fulfilled their duty and crashed on the ocean instead. Some pilots fortunately survived.

People in New Zealand repaired the crashed zero plane but they delayed its completion on purpose as they knew that the young Japanese solider should go back to try the Kamikaze attack again and they wanted to protect his life. Actually, they made it as the repair finished after Japan announced its surrender. The exhibited zero plane had never used for a fight and it was donated later to the museum as a memory of the war.


After the museum, I walked down to Mt. Eden, a dead volcano located in the city's south. It's one of the city's parks where we can get the whole view of the city on its summit. Not that high, so it's a good place to go walking without hesitations. I walked up to the summit where I could see a huge crater from which magma erupted long time ago. Now it's covered with grass so it looks a huge green hole.

Then, I bumped into a Chinese tourist group. They came on a huge bus and chatted each other with excitement. I don't speak Chinese so I didn't understand what they talked about but it seemed that they were all excited at sight of the splendid view. Then, a funny happening happened to me.

One of the Chinese guys turned to me and suddenly spoke something in Chinese to me. I told them that I don't speak Chinese at all in English but he didn't understand me. He kept talking to me entirely in Chinese and I told them back that I was Japanese. Then suddenly, he began to chat with his friends and turned to me again saying "Friend, Friend, Friend!!".

I was spaced out at this friend-friend attack for a while but they didn't care. They said to me "Friend-friend, picture-picture" and pulled my hands. I didn't understand what was going on but I guessed that they would like to see me a friend and take a picture with me with the nice view of Auckland city. Now I think that they were excited that they found an Asian on their trip so they would like to picture me as a part of their tour memory, but I couldn't figure it out at that time. Anyways, I thought it will finish when I'm in their photo frame. I was taken 13 pictures with them for their camera, and I'm quite confident that I am a part of their good memory in Auckland now.