An "overwhelmed" Richard and Tracey Ryall, along with children Cameron and Hannah, were greeted by friends and family at Queenstown Airport, five days after they decided to leave the eastern seaboard town.
The family were in Japan on a family overseas experience; Richard as a physical education teacher at an international school which his children attended, and Tracey as an English teacher 5km down the road.
Mr Ryall, who was in the school's library at the time of the quake, stood in the doorway while pupils took shelter under desks.
"It was really quite long - about two minutes - and it just kept on throbbing, and throbbing, and kept on coming. We were rocking and rolling, the library and all the shelves were shaking and all the books were being spilled out."
Mr Ryall said although they were only 10km from the ocean, Sendai is backed by mountains so they were in no danger from tsunamis. Despite suffering no damage to their house apart from a toppled crockery cabinet, they had no water or electricity.
"We stayed there for Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday night - we sort of got into a bit of a siege mentality, like cavemen," Mr Ryall said.
"The principal of the school and I were out collecting wood from the forests and getting water from streams; sort of getting ready for what we thought would be a long time without power or water."
However, when their cellphones began to work last Monday and they began hearing about the crippled nuclear plants through international media, they said "OK, let's go."
With the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant just 220km away, they took their passports and fled.
Travelling in convoy with three other cars over the hills towards the western side of the island, they managed to book flights on Mrs Ryall's e-reader as they drove.
"On that first day we actually drove 16 hours ... Probably only 450km, but the first five hours was basically getting over the hill and down into the next area. We were siphoning petrol from one vehicle to another until we got to Niigata on the opposite coast, and life there is just carrying on as normal."
From Niigata, they continued on to Kyoto where they stayed with a friend for two nights before flying to Auckland.
Although due to return in July, the family were sad to leave behind friends, and the culture they had come to love. However, Mr Ryall will soon have to return to deal with problems caused by their hasty departure.
"The car we were driving ... I've got to take that back to the owner, and we've left a lot of stuff behind ... I'll just wait a few weeks until it's calmed down, and then when I feel it's safe, I'll go back and tidy things up."