Ginkgo trees at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan, December 2025 It was colder today, yesterday’s cloud blanket giving way to a clear blue sky. Ginkgo trees lined the streets, more yellow than ever in the sunshine. As I breathed in the soft ginkgo scent, I let the urge to take a picture go and tried instead to memorise how the leaves shimmered in the wind. Today was my final day in Tokyo. Two navy-dressed ladies pushed green carts; inside sat eight kindergarten children with yell

The bamboo forest, Oita, Japan, Nov 2025 I climbed up the muddy hill into the bamboo forest at the Japanese temple. Looking up, their leaves clustered overhead, forming a ceiling.  I'd seen these bamboo trees every day. In daylight, they shone softly, swaying and rustling when the wind picked up. I always noticed them, but only in passing, as I went for a run, started the car, or pulled weeds from the garden. They were part of the background, something stable and constant, ea

O-torii Gate, Miyajima, Japan, Nov 2025 Today I did a day trip from Hiroshima to Miyajima. I’d initially had mixed feelings about it because of how touristy people had said it was. My eyes bulged as I exited the train, a herd of us streaming toward the ferry like a concert crowd spilling out after the final song. I braced myself for a miserable wait, but the queue moved almost magically. People vanished onto the giant vessels as if we were stepping into Hermione Granger’s bea

Today I left my two suitcases — thirty kilograms of my life — at a Family Mart in Osaka. I walked out with only a ten-kilo red hiking backpack. For the next month, that’s all I have.

The cultural psychology behind something as simple as crossing the street.

“A city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time.” — Patrick Geddes Canary Wharf, London, United Kingdom, August 2025 Introduction It’s 6:14 AM in Shenzhen airport. I’m in transit to Seoul, wide awake on London time after a sleepless night on a Starbucks couch. Reflecting on ten weeks in the city I once thought I knew, the hum of London still purred in my chest. Before: The Bias of Memory It was an absurd luxury being in one of the world’s most expensive cities wi

I’d found Oyuki on a Reddit thread, which felt like due diligence. It was a local sushi spot, and people’s comments were persuasive, so I set out at dusk to find it.

We live in a world obsessed with adding more. But at Wulanhada in Inner Mongolia, I realised the real challenge is learning what to subtract.

I used to nod at famous paintings, snap a picture, and call it culture. Then somewhere between a cheese painting, Bath’s Georgian streets, and Van Gogh’s trembling roses, something changed.

One evening in Dubrovnik, when the horizon flashed with lightning and rain drizzled over the medieval buildings, I felt a spark of energy. I was dressed for the night — makeup done, black skirt and red lace top on, ready to join the young travellers drinking on the top deck — when something in me shifted. Instead of heading to pre-drinks, I leapt off the boat.

If you’re thinking about booking Sail Croatia, here’s what my week was like (spoiler: a mix of turquoise swims, backpacker banter, and nights out at fortress clubs).

The Lake District is most certainly the most beautiful place I've been in the UK, and it even felt like a pocket of New Zealand in Europe.

There’s a reason people say your environment shapes you, though it’s not usually in the way we imagine. It isn’t that sitting in a trendy lobby scouting out the CEOs by their Italian leather briefcases magically makes you more productive, or that surrounding yourself with ambitious people guarantees you’ll suddenly share their drive. The truth is subtler: environment shapes belief, and belief is the thing that tips you into action.

The Willow in the Lake is a short creative piece written from the perspective of the Wānaka Tree — a lone willow in New Zealand’s Lake...

There’s something about knowing your time in a place is limited. It makes you do more, see more, appreciate things others take for granted. That urgency creates a magnetism. Newness carries a kind of magic. Barely 24 hours in, and he was already renting a car and planning a spontaneous trip. I admire—and miss—that kind of energy. The kind I had while on exchange at Dartmouth.

I was convinced that moving abroad—somewhere new, vibrant, exciting—would finally make me feel fulfilled. After all, when I was in Thailand on exchange, I was happy. When I was back in Auckland? Not so much.

I froze. My brain started firing on all cylinders, and my heart raced. Do I do it? I hesitated for what felt like an eternity.

I used to think vision boards were just star-sign-y, manifestation-y woo-woo—how could pasting colorful images onto blank white make your

During my three-month exchange term at Dartmouth in the fall, I started noticing people wearing handmade-looking rings. When I complimented them, they’d casually say, “Oh, I made it at the jewelry studio.” I added it to my mental bucket list… and promptly forgot about it.

What is the American college experience like? Is it really like what we see in the movies? These questions planted the seed for me to apply for an exchange in the U.S. I’m from New Zealand (NZ), where most people grow up engaging heavily with American media and entertainment from politics to Hollywood.