Hello

Hello!  Hi!  This is a blog!  I'm Harry, the person who writes the things and eats the food.

Image unrelated.

More than ever, I'm not entirely sure who this blog is for, which makes any kind of introduction or informational update kind of tricky.  If I don't know you personally or you're not the author of "Potato Pals" googling himself, I'm not sure why you'd be interested, so starting with the basics seems a little unnecessary.  On the other hand, I've made a fair number of friends, acquaintances, and traveling companions over the years, and I haven't always done the best job of keeping in touch, so some explanation might be helpful.  If you happen to go through any of the archives, way back to 2009, this uncertainty of audience has been a constant theme, vacillating between "I'm Harry, an American travel writer and carbon-based life form" and "Hi, Mom!"  I'd like to think that this blog has something to offer, though, even if you don't give any specific sort of damn about me—information, inspiration, entertainment, blurry sunset photos, etc.

And occasional hard-hitting journalism

Since the last post on this blog back at the end of 2014, Jenn and I have (*deep breath*) wrapped up our bike tour in Southeast Asia, studied meditation in Thailand, returned to Kansas, visited an incredible eco-village, biked across Missouri, taught English in Normandy, biked across Bretagne and southwest Ireland, bummed around Western Europe for a spell, returned to Kansas again, started graduate degree programs, and made absolutely no progress in kicking our karaoke habit.  More on these episodes to come (probably).

So without going too much more into the backstory (plenty of that in the archives), here's the most immediate skinny on why I'm firing up ol' Bloggy again: for the next six months, from January until June 2017, I'm going to be teaching kindergarten at an international school in Guinea that I'm going to try to avoid naming to preserve the privacy of my colleagues and supervisors.  This is going to be my first time in Africa, my first full-time classroom teaching position, and one of my final steps in getting my elementary teaching license so I can do more of this craziness in the future.  I've packed my antimalarials and very little else, and I've got a feeling there are going to be more than a few surprises in the immediate future.  Over the next six months, this blog will likely continue to be a mishmash of professional multicultural educator issues, travel pictures and anecdotes, and sundry personal reflections.  There will be puns.

Of course, the main reason I'm going to be restarting the blog now is because for the first time since this whole adventure started, I'm going to be getting into various shenanigans and escapades without my all-time partner-in-crime, Jenn.  This blog isn't just to keep something for posterity (blogs don't have an expiration date, right?), or just to hear myself talk (I do plenty of that already), but to share something of this experience with Jenn, who will be continuing her studies in Kansas while I'm off doing whatever it is I'm about to be doing.

😍

There's a lot to reflect on over the next few days, to say nothing of the next six months.  When I have the time, inclination, and internet access, I'll post something from Guinea.  I'll also try to share some odds and ends from the last couple of years, and I may tidy up the blog a bit if I get around to it.  Forgive the mothballs.

How to Tour Japan By Bicycle: When to Do It

I don't know you.  Maybe you're a veteran cycle tourist looking for a new country to conquer, or maybe you're a longtime Japanophile who's eagerly planning that first trip to Japan.  Maybe, like us, you're an English teacher with all too little vacation time to visit the country that you're calling home for awhile.  It doesn't really matter.

The Internet is awash in journals about those who have biked their way across Japan, some of which are pretty good reads (hint hint).  But if you're looking for information about planning your own trip, actual information is a little hard to come by.  Even in Japanese, it's pretty scarce, as bike-camping doesn't seem to be that popular a hobby in Japan.  You'll pass plenty of sport cyclists on the road, to be sure, but only day trippers, and only on roads that are known among hobbyists and appear in all of the relevant (hobbyist) literature in Japan.

This post, and the posts to follow (tagged "How To") are intended as a low-bullshit informational resource for people who don't know much about Japan written by people who don't know much about cycle touring.  We're still laughably noob -- I'd have to run outside and look at my ride to tell you what kind of cartridge or tubes it has -- but we know from Japan, if only because we slogged through it and made lots of mistakes to learn what the Internet wouldn't teach us.  We'll tell you how we did it, and I promise the following cliched terms will never appear in any post to come: "enchanting,""spiritual," "mysterious," "Land of the Rising Sun," "rewarding," "Pocari Sweat," "gangbusters."

When to Do It:

It stands to reason that you need to pick the dates of your trip carefully, no matter your destination; anywhere is paradise or completely inhospitable depending on the season (except maybe San Diego or the cold, lifeless vacuum of space, neither of which is particularly recommended).  We've toured in Japan from March to June, and a little in the dead of summer, and let me tell you, there's a huge variation in temperature in those few months, especially from Kansai to the west.  In mid-March, it was definitely warm enough to bike comfortably during the day, but at night we were frequently shivering too hard to fall asleep, even with our warm three-season sleeping bags and winter coats.  By May, the sleeping bags, coats, long underwear, scarves, and mittens were little more than dead weight, and we rued only bringing a few pairs of underwear each.  Packing is not easy, is what I'm saying.

I guess this advice may not be too revolutionary, but if you're going to do a long tour in Japan, choose your season and pack for weather that's both hotter and colder than you'd expect.  If you're planning on a summer tour, pack a light coat and long pants.  August is beastly hot and humid, enough to soak everything you're wearing in sweat but not enough to be hazardous to your health.

This picture was taken at the end of March, up in
the mountains around Beppu.  We were unprepared
for snow, and ended up buying scarves and hats
in the mountain's gift shop for too much money.

If you do insist on biking during the winter...well, I guess I'm not physically able to stop you, but I can tell you that winter in Japan is generally gray, windy, rainy, and miserable, but not particularly icy outside of the mountains, which tend to get snow as late as March.  In our experience, biking when it's super cold means our willpower to keep things cheap starts to wear away faster, which means we're a lot more likely to spring for a room in a hotel or 旅館 (ryokan), which can be more expensive than you'd imagine, which is why we're stuck teaching English in Seoul now instead of biking our way across the world.  =( indeed.

Something you'll want to keep in mind besides the Four Distinct Seasons that Japan enjoys (and all Japanese talk about) (at great length) (to every single foreigner) (as though it were something as unique and special as unicorns) is the wide array of additional mini-seasons, including Rainy Season, Hanami Season, Camping Season, Leaf-Viewing Season, and Typhoon Season.

Rainy Season: June-August

Protip: I already tried a "raining Hello Kitties and dogs or something" joke.  Nothing doing.

If you're planning to be cycling in Japan in June, pack some damn good rain gear or else find somewhere dry to wait out the rainy season.  Global warming being a fickle mistress, some years the rains start early, during the first week of June, some years they continue until the middle of August, and some years they don't come at all.  The typical pattern for a day in rainy season is a heavy shower in the morning followed by an afternoon of sunshine.  If the morning is clear, then it's due to rain in the afternoon, unless of course it doesn't rain at all.  Or it rains all day.  Mysterious Enigmatic, that Japan.

If you are planning to tour in Japan during June, keep an eye on the weather report, then immediately disregard whatever you read.  If it looks like rain, it may rain in the next five minutes or it may not rain a drop all day.  The best recourse, really, is to have your rain gear ready at all times and plan to seek shelter only once it's actually begun to rain.  Then stay in that shelter until the rain stops or it's too dark not to seek a camping spot or hotel.  I can't tell you all the times we've wasted a sunny day at camp waiting for the rain to come and go, not to mention the times we've plowed through a rainstorm only to wind up drenched and miserable in the sunshine that followed the deceptively brief storm (just kidding, yes I can).

Hanami Season (also known as "spring"): March-April

Yep, those flowers sure are something, all right.  For a couple months of the year, the scenery lights up with pale pink cherry blossoms, magenta plum blossoms, and the evocative brown of sarariiman barf.  It should be no problem determining when the flowers will be blooming, as 30% of the Japanese media is dedicated to tracking just that.  Do note that the start of flower-viewing season is in the bitter cold of early March, however, and despite what you may hope, a few tallboys of Asahi aren't enough to keep out the chill at night.

One complication of hanami season is that public parks, which were our go-to campground during our tour (more on this later), will be crammed full of revelers on the weekends.  Odds are every park you'll come across will be either a city park or a traditional hanami destination for city dwellers, so on weekends in the peak of hanami season (late March through mid-April), you may have to shell out for a hotel.

Another point to keep in mind is that the flowers stay in bloom much later up in the mountains, so if your tour takes you through one of Japan's many many many many many mountain ranges, you should be able to enjoy the scenery through your oxygen deprivation as late as the end of May.  Of course, since the official season ends in April, there aren't really any picnickers that late; once again, the Japanese stay true to the calendar over the actual presence of flowers to appreciate and drink under.

Camping Season: July 7th-August 31st

Japan has oodles of campgrounds (metric oodles, not Imperial, mind you)!  And they are open for every day in which anyone would ever want to go camping, provided of course that those days fall within the official Camping Season.  Otherwise, if you're camping...why on earth would you be camping?  Weirdo.

So yeah, of all of these beautiful, manicured campgrounds you'll see throughout Japan, about 90% will be closed for most of the year.  Not entirely a bad thing, of course, as when they're open, these campgrounds tend to fill to maximum occupancy with Japanese people, who tend to go camping with four tents, eight pavilions, and a washing machine each (no joke on that washing machine).  Also, campgrounds are frequently are-you-kidding-me levels of expensive, comparable to car campsites on the California coast ($50 or so per night), and for those prices, you may as well stay in a hotel and get a shower in the process.

Most of the campsites that are closed from August through June aren't fenced off (not well, anyway), which means there's some beautiful, developed, campworthy ground just being wasted.  More tips on free camping in later posts, but for now, know that you're really doing Mother Earth a favor by putting some of that clear-cut-and-bulldozed land to use.

Leaf-Viewing Season: September-November

Well, you can see some pretty great leaves in this photo (taken May 5th, 2013).  We don't have any experience touring during Leafmas, but I would conjecture from my intimate knowledge of Japanese culture that it's pretty similar to Hanami season, but in the fall.

Typhoon Season: September to October, and sometimes October through August

This is the main reason to check the weather reports.  You don't really wanna mess with typhoons.  The place to check for this (and earthquake info) is the JMA.

And that's about it for our wisdom about the timing of bike tours in Japan.  Feel free to ask any questions in the comments and we'll get back to you like gangbusters totally like gangbusters (changed my mind, this word is awesome, and will be worked into every post from now on) (like gangbusters).

The Lowdown

OK, so.

This guy:

...and this gal:

...joined forces several years ago and formed this amazing team:

And as the Gaijin Patrol, they have been cutting a streak of awesome all across the globe ever since (well, until recently, across a very specific few corners of the globe).  In Osaka, we educated surly Japanese teens with only a few hundred pounds of crazy, a thimbleful of good sense, and exactly zero years of teacher training.  We did battle with ogres, survived earthquakes, climbed motherfucking mountains of sand, avoided making eye contact with maids, got assaulted by children, found Happy Beach, rocked the roof off of various ghetto bars, and ate bugs one time and it totally wasn't an accident or anything, you guys, for real.  Also, Tommy Lee Jones was there, though that may have been a dream.

At last, when our combined rockage threatened to shake The Big O into the sea, we left for the good of the land.  Having saved our money carefully, we decided that the wisest course of action would be to invest it in further education to better our future career prospects and prepare for the children that we would one day bring into this world.

Then we said, "Nah, fuck it, let's buy some bikes."

And so the legend was born...

Having had little experience riding bikes since our idyllic childhoods in the Midwest, we were relatively new to bike camping.  We had done a fair amount of reading in our apartment in Osaka, and as we studied Japanese and nursed our bruised bodies (children be violent), we dreamed of circling the globe like Travelling Two or Going Slowly.  Realizing that it was far easier to drop everything and be full-time bike bums before having children than after, we decided there was no time like the present and no way like holyshitgorightnow.  After all, though we were comfortable teaching in Osaka, there was little room for growth or challenge.  Sure, we could have stayed longer, saved more money, played more gigs with Raku Three, studied more Japanese, but...well, that would have just been more of the same.  So, clearly: bikes.

The first thing we did with our bikes was to educate ourselves in their maintenance and upkeep so as to better equip ourselves for world traveling.  No, wait, first we put a bunch of sweet stickers on the bikes.  Then the other thing.  The next thing we did was to bike across Missouri, then bike from San Francisco to San Diego.  There will be more written on this, but SPOILER ALERT WE MADE IT.  And so, bikes sufficiently broken in, we flew back to Asia, never to return until we had kicked its ass.

The Plan, in short, is to bike around Asia until the money runs out or we get sick of traveling.  Right now, we are still in Phase 1 of the Plan, which involves very few bikes.  The reason for this break is that, as of press time, it is winter in much of the world, and thus far too cold for bike camping.  So, to wait out the winter, we flew to Seoul to teach more childrens and make a little more cash to support our travel habits.  Since winter still stubbornly has refused to end as of February, we thought we’d blow some of the vacation dough on a trip to the Philippines until it’s warm enough to return to Japan and The Plan, which, if you’ve been paying attention, is to bike around Asia until the money runs out or we get sick of traveling.

That about brings us up to speed, then.  From here, there will be frequent posts about what we’re up to at the moment, periodically intercut with flashbacks to the last few months of travel.  Expect photos, whimsy, and more analogies than you can shake a regulation stick at.  But first, a sample of what else we’ve accomplished since our ogre-battling etc. days:

Adventure!

Travel!

Adorable children!

Beasties, critters, and assorted varmints!

More beasties, critters, and assorted varmints!

More nasty food!

And...

...mysteries solved!

Life of Why

Combing through my notebook, I stumbled on a piece that I wrote about interviewing at Nichibei English Service, back in my days working as a part-time sofa cover. I present it now as a look back at what a noob I was those many months ago. Let's enjoy, won't us?

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I continue to sweat through my only suit as I turn in my chair to stare out the floor-to-ceiling window that looms 26 stories above Osaka's Kita Ward. The city is usually described to Westerners as ugly, industrial, metallic, boring -- at best, these epithets are followed by a "but" and something uninspired about history or culture. I wonder: am I the only hakujin in this vast office building packed to the gills with salarymen, kimono-clad old women, jewelry stored, coffee shops? How many gaijin are there in the hundreds of squatting concrete monstrosities in my line of sight? How many of them are unemployed, too?

I turn back to face the tiny classroom I've been waiting in for nearly an hour. The whole room is done up in a monochromatic rainbow, but the effect is less Men in Black and more modernistic community college: gray carpet, gray plastic desks, whiteboard, white acoustical tile, eggshell wallpaper, black-and-white photocopied fliers stapled to gray felt message boards. The room seems set up for two dozen students, but conditions are cramped; I had to shove one of the desks forward to accommodate my modest gut, crushing the row of chairs in front of me as I did so. At 5'10, I am clearly uncomfortably big for this room.

Staring up at me from the cramped table (my legs press uncomfortably against its black metal underbelly) is my application for Nichibei English Services that I was given by the secretary who showed me in when I arrived at 1:10, a full 20 minutes before my interview was scheduled. In my ignorance, I had politely introduced myself to her and offered her a copy of my resume, grinning like a fiend to seem as genki as possible. Now, 40 minutes after my interview was due to begin, I can't stop my mind from lingering over the bursts of feminine laughter that periodically echo in under the door.

"No, no, he seriously said 'Good morning, I am English teacher, appointment interview have!"

"Ha ha, really?"

"Yes! And he wouldn't stop smiling for some reason! I think he thought I was in charge!"

"Tell us again about how sweaty his suit was!"

I sigh deeply, in the process blowing a few drops of sweat onto the application. The hideous cyclopean blank under the final unanswered question glares up at me: "Why did you come to Japan?"

I glance at the clock. 2:15.

It seemed a fair question, on the surface. No teaching certification, no work visa, little knowledge of Japanese (say, on par with David Sedaris's French), two degrees in an unusably academic discipline...why the hell did I come to Japan?

I had certainly been asked this question, this accursed, stinking, raging motherfucker of a question before: by parents, by friends, by teachers, by all the acquaintances and random strangers my mother had told for some reason. Usually I was able to pass off a joke or a bullshit answer, something ranging from "Why not?" to "I've always had a fascination with the elegance and and complexity of Japanese culture" to "Well, I like the food, ha ha!", each of which contains some kernel of truth, but is still beautifully meaningless.

Still, there always seemed to be something suspicious or evilly prying about the question (feelings only intensified when seeing it in print on a job application). I mean, hey, why the hell do you do what you do? Huh? Why do your work your job? To pay the bills, right? TO advance your career? To try to eke out a little happiness in this thoroughly fucked-up world? Boredom, maybe? Fuck you!

Then again, I had been asked the big "why" question during my interview at Pizza Hut the summer before flying to Osaka...maybe Nichibei English Service just wants a bullshit answer, too. Maybe they'll be as relieved as the Pizza Hut RM was to hear something stupid like, "Well, I've always loved eating here, ha ha!"

2:25. I keep spotting a silhouette through the narrow papered-over window in the door. Eyes glazing over, sweat painting my brand-new Hanes undershirt yellow, I can swear that someone is checking to see if I'm finished yet. The door stays closed.

OK, then, why the hell did I come to Japan? Other than "the food" and similar hoo-ha, there are two real reasons, neither of which would be interesting or even acceptable to a prospective employer.

The first reason is simple, or at least comprehensible: love. My wife and I had discussed coming to Japan for years. We gleefully filled out one application form after another for the JET Program, a Japanese governmental program that imports hundreds of smelly foreign barbarians every year -- most of them fresh out of college, with zero teaching experience or Japanese ability -- to serve as Assistant Language Teachers in public schools. Essays written, letters of recommendation forwarded, we passed our final year at Truman State University cheerfully planning our futures. JET Program to Peace Corps to MATESOL, maybe? Or JET to Fulbright to PhD?

(...Oh god, it just hit me. Truman State University? Could I have picked as worse alma mater for finding a job in Japan? I strongly consider doctoring my photocopied diplomas to something less offensive, like, say, "Al Gore State University.")

The sympathy poured in from all corners, most of all my own. "Gee, I was sure you'd be a lock!" "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear it!" "How is it that you didn't get in, even with your teaching experience and Japanese?" Like, I know. I immolated myself in self-pity for hours before bothering to congratulate Jenn, behavior for which I'm still extremely ashamed. We were married two months later, and we dropped our visa applications in the mail a week after that. I am legally a "spouse," as far as the Japanese government is concerned.

2:31. Still haven't been escorted out of the building and exposed as a fraud. The "food" answer grows ever more tempting.

I begin: "I came to Japan because"

No college-boy tricks here. No double-spacing or margin-fudging. No typographical acrobatics, no obfuscation or unfounded generalizations or meaningless jargon -- you're not in Kansas anymore.

The second reason I came to Japan, and really, the lesser of the two, was a very provable if idle interest in the country. At 9 years old, I took an after-school course that taught me to count to 99 and to appreciate mochi. At 18, I tried my damnedest to like anime. At 19, I cultivated a short-lived interest in Japanese folk tales. Hell, I took six Japanese language courses and one culture course. Can't they just read my resume instead of having me fill out this ridiculous form?

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Anticlimactic, I know, but as it happens, I never finished this piece. Now, a year and a half later, I find myself almost totally unable to recreate that mindset. I can enter strange restaurants without fear. I've applied for dozens more jobs and I've been working for 14 months. I've moved and opened two bank accounts. I have Japanese friends. All I can offer to finish this story, for now at least, is resolve the two big questions:

1. While I can't remember exactly what answer I finally gave, it was something uninspired that might as well have been copied from the first paragraph of a travel guide to Japan, something about a synthesis of traditional culture and progress. Pffffft.

2. I got the job. Go figure.

Happy New Year and all that. Here's to another year of confusion, be it awkward, joyous, drunken, or all three!

The Lowdown

Previously, on "Harry and Jenn: The Continuing Adventures":

Having graduated from Truman State University with an M.A. in English, a B.M. in Cello Performance, and a whole lot of attitude, Harry and Jenn promptly skipped town and donated a good chunk of their worldly possessions to the Dumpster By Our Apartment Furniture, Electronics, and Liquor Cooperative. A scant few days after giving John Ashcroft the finger at graduation*, they Accord'd their way to Lawrence, KS, resting only for the night before leaving town again. They returned to Lawrence a week later, having braved prairie dogs, Mormons, and $2 Jello Shots to get married in Las Vegas, NV by a nice old lady named Joyce...but that's another blog post entirely.

Now, after two months of working fast food jobs and selling plasma (guess which paid better), they are off for the Kongo neighborhood of Tondabayashi City, Osaka Prefecture, Japan. There, Jenn will teach English to real-life Japanese schoolchildren at Kongo High School (well, a few of them might be robots). She's an employee of the Japanese government, a JET; Harry, on the other hand, is a different breed of gaijin. He's a lone wolf, a loner, a maverick. Nothing can tie him down, no sir, and he won't be saddled with any single job until he finds that special one that will hire him.

"Jenn, you have to get on that plane!"

"I know, Harry! I have a ticket for it, plus I've already checked my bags!"

"Oh...OK!"

Now, separated by an ocean, removed in time (14 hours) and space, Harry must find and be reunited with his mighty bride.

"I promise you, Jenn, I will find you. I promise."

But when? When will the Gaijin Patrol be united and finally embark on their grandest adventure yet?

...Monday, August 3rd, 9ish in the morning, AA Flight #somethingorother.

We now return you to "Harry and Jenn: The Continuing Adventures: The Blog."

*Symbolically, anyway.**

**That is, we gave the symbolic finger to the real-life John Ashcroft. True story.

"Wow...what an experience!"

That's really the only thing that everyone can agree on: Japan will sure be...something...that happens to us. Yep. Really, what else can you say to somebody about to move to Japan? No matter how well-intentioned, most people take on that same brief look, a glaze forming over their eyes as they quickly think of anime and cosplay, chopsticks and karate, sumo wrestling and WWII. "That's going to be so interesting/amazing" is another fairly popular comment: vaguely positive, yet containing no information.

Truth be told, neither Jenn nor I have any better idea of what's going to happen within the next few years. Beyond the extra-long flight over the Pacific, all that I can visualize is a big white blur (populated by half-formed images gleaned from Lost in Translation and other less-nuanced nuggets of pop culture, some involving tentacles). The only decent analogy I've been able to come up with involves a barrel, a waterfall, and insufficient werewithal to nail ourselves into the former before we go over the latter.

It is with this in mind that we've started this blog: we are cultural ambassadors, and it's our duty as such to report our travels in the exotic land of Japan to our friends and neighbors; we are lonely gaijin hoping to keep in touch with said friends and neighbors; also, we are motherfuckin' rock stars, and would like to be Internet Famous, please.

If you're unfamiliar with blogs, blogging, bloggage, and other blogtivities, worry not, this is my first time, too. Basically, 1. we post, 2. you read it, 3. you comment on what you read, 4. profit (TBD). The two of us will be posting as often as we can, giving the folks back home on the Internet a double dose of pointed cultural analysis, hilarious travel anecdotes, photojournalism, and assorted hoo-ha. We are not scholars of Japan, nor are we professional journalists; we are just a Dude and a Lady with a great deal of snark and one working laptop between them.

Here's the breakdown...this is Harry (ain't he cute?):

This is Jenn in her wedding dress:

This is what it looks like in the place where we're going to live and teach English for the next year or more:

Hilarity ensues.