Yasuko Joll - Japanese ‘Kiwi can do’

She may come from Japan, but Queenstown’s Yasuko Joll sure has plenty of ‘Kiwi can do’ attitude. If New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister asks for a toothbrush from hotel reception late at night you improvise.

Yasuko grew up in Fukuoka, southern Japan, in a small country town surrounded by rice fields – her grandmother a rice farmer.
Schoolwork and volleyball filled her week, the family heading to Grandma’s for special New Year celebrations where the kids helped make mochi – a Japanese New Year tradition.

Yasuko then headed to Osaka to study tourism for two years, qualifying as a travel agent. She learned the hard way early on, once booking friends on a US trip, leaving them to sprint the terminal with only 10 minutes to transit between flights, the crew waiting, holding back the plane.

Keen to experience the world, Yasuko heard about working holiday visas and at 29 headed for NZ alone, spending three months in Auckland before arriving in Queenstown in the late 90s.

Housekeeping at Blue Peaks didn’t cut it and Yasuko quickly found travel agent work for Kintetsu Tours (KNT), an inbound tour operator, during a time when Japanese tourism was booming.

“They were boom times for Japanese visitors and I organised their holiday details, restaurant bookings and that,” Yasuko says. One booking took her fancy – Japanese-speaking Kiwi Tanken Tours hiking guide Dave Joll, who’d worked in Japan. They married in 2003.

After eight years at KNT she took a role as receptionist at Millbrook Resort – an asset to the team with her Japanese language and cultural know-how. “I struggled a bit with the English as the customers didn’t slow down to talk to me,” she laughs.

Yasuko recalls the big preparations they made when Prince William was coming to visit. “We’d spent several weeks getting ready, and we were all waiting on the plane to arrive, but the weather turned bad, and the plane had to turn back to Christchurch.”

There were other big Kiwi names though – Yasuko having now been converted to All Black rugby fan status by Dave. However, when guest All Black great Jonah Lomu came to reception one night asking to rent a video (movie) Yasuko was “so embarrassed to show him the list”. “The hotel collection was really bad, and I kept apologising,” she smiles. “I was so excited to meet him, and he had to watch RoboCop.”

Then there was the night when Deputy Prime Minister Bill English came to ask for a toothbrush late as the airline had lost his bag. “Normally we had them, but the hotel shop was closed and all I could find was dental floss,” she says. “He was very good and said, ‘Ok, that’s better than nothing’.”

Yasuko then joined Dave and his partners at Tanken Tours, sitting her passenger service licence and becoming a hiking and sightseeing guide, mainly taking Japanese on day hikes into Routeburn Flats Hut.

In the early stages she got a little lost, thinking she’d lead her tour group on an alternate route. “I was worried I’d got it wrong so made them all walk all the way back, including two quite old ladies.”

Yasuko and David then joined their Tanken partners, including mountaineer-writer Craig McLachlan, writing a Lonely Planet hiking guidebook on Japan.

“We did Kyushu and part of Okinawa, Iriomote – a famous track through the island renowned for its poisonous snakes and leeches.” The locals were worried when they set off on the difficult 12-hour walk, not well signposted. “There was no phone coverage and no public transport at the end, so luckily one geeky guy who was looking for butterflies offered us a ride out.”

The GFC hit in 2008, so the Tanken team started brewing sake from Queenstown, launching Zenkuro Sake in 2015, now 12 times international sake award winner.

Dave began brewing in the kitchen but was quickly moved to the garage. Before long Yasuko had launched a sideline cosmetics business, using the sake kasu – residue from the brewing process, renowned among Japanese women for its amazing effects on complexion. “They’d be queueing up outside the brewery.”

She now has local Japanese ladies making the products and is actively involved, also promoting sake kasu among upmarket chefs and local craft beer breweries.

For some years Yasuko helped the Police, courts and medical centres as a Japanese translator and helped organise the former Japanese Festival.

Now Mum to two teenagers, it’s been challenging being so far from family support back home, but Yasuko says she’s loved introducing NZ and its culture to Japanese people, and now, through Zenkuro, she’s doing the reverse.

“I’ve been so impressed with how generous, kind and down to earth Kiwis are,” she says. “They have such good common sense. Kiwis just line up in a queue naturally whereas Japanese need lines to show them where,” she says. “I try to teach that to Japanese people when I’m guiding.”