Out-of-Continuity Update

In case you're wondering...

At the moment Jenn and I are hanging out at a beautiful little guesthouse in the north of Thailand, right by the border with Laos.  Close enough, in fact, that we've been spending the last two weeks staring at it from across the Mekong.  As is our way, we showed up here by accident, planning to stay for a night or two, and two weeks later, we're still here.  We've been extremely busy writing, meditating, doing yoga, making music, and just generally being as creative as all get-out (also, "Settlers of Catan" is involved).  In a few days we take the train down to the far, far south of Thailand for a ten-day meditation retreat.  No, I don't know anything about meditation, but when have I ever let that stop me?

And oh yeah, we bought our plane tickets back to America.  It's a Christmas miracle!  See you in February, American friends!

Oh, and merry Christmas.

Journey to the West (East)

All right kids, that about brings us up to speed.  We made it to Seoul in just under three weeks, a little less than what it took us last time and with far less frustration.  We're in top fighting shape, we've remembered most of what we'd forgotten about bike touring, and incredibly, we still haven't blown through our savings yet.  Not entirely, anyway.  Which means it's onto the next phase of this grand adventure: China and southeast Asia!

Previously, this leg was referred to as "Shanghai to Singapore," but seeing as we probably won't be going anywhere near Shanghai, we're now calling it "Beijing to Bangkok" for alliteration's sake.  Maybe we'll make it as far as Singapore, maybe not.  In any event, here's a bit of important news about the Gaijin At Large:

Unless we run out of money sooner than we anticipate, we will most likely be coming back to the ol' USA in May of 2015.  If we're accepted to a program to teach English in France, we'll be in the States until that starts up in September.  If not, then we'll likely be in the States for the foreseeable future.  Not forever, mind; there's still way too much world out there to be tied down to one place for more than three years or so, and though we're both fast approaching that most decrepit age of 30, we still have a few years left before we have to yell at kids to get off our lawns full-time.  But in any case, if you're looking forward to getting some Gaijin love in person, you'll get your chance starting next May (reservations accepted).

And now a brief moment of comic relief.

The next announcement: since we're going to be in China for the next two months (give or take), that means our access to the Internet will be...questionable.  I've read that, officially, Blogger and like websites are completely blocked on the Chinese internet, so even when we are able to find internet access, we may not be able to keep the blog updated regularly (or at all).  I've also read that bypassing these blocks is so regularly done that even a technologically incompetent cretin like me should be able to manage it.  In any case, if the next two months (or more) go by and there's no update to this site, don't worry about us.  We'll try to keep the "Where Are We Now?" section updated at the very least, but to repeat, if you don't hear from us, don't worry, we're totally fine.  Expect more amazing tales of questionable veracity in a few days or a few months.

So for now, we bid you 안녕히게세요, 行ってきます, a bientôt, and catch you on the flip side!

Back on the Road

When last we left Our Heroes, they had mothballed their bikes and settled in for a year of teaching English and rockin' the sedentary expat lifestyle.  All the excitement and glamor of bike touring would have to wait while we refilled our coffers.  Now, a year later, we're a little wiser, much less fit, and ready to get back to The Plan.

The Plan, as it exists currently, is as follows:

• July: Bike from Seoul to Busan, catch the ferry to Japan
• August: Visit some old friends in Osaka, apply for our Chinese visas, and oh yeah, perform at the Pasar Music Festival at the world-famous Pasar Moon!
• September: More biking in Korea to put our hard-earned Korean language skills to work, possibly revisiting Dori Village.
• October-???: Overland China to Singapore-ish.  Planning, generally, to take the ferry to Qingdao, the train to Xi'an, then bike south through China to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Malaysia.

Here is Google's suggested route for our...hmm...

This last leg of the route will, if the money holds out, carry us until July 2015, when we hope to return to the States with wonderful memories and calves that could stun an elephant.  From there, the hope is to start teaching English in France!  We're applying to the Teaching Assistant Program in France, a program exclusively for Americans up to 30 years old (wheeeeee!).  If that goes through, then October 2015, we'll be shipping out for Europe, so friends on the continent, look out!  If we're not accepted to this program, then I guess we'll have to find something even crazier and more adventurous to do like the Peace Corps or something, ha ha ha.

No, seriously, the Peace Corps is our Plan B.

As for the last year of radio silence?  In short, life in Seoul has been...fine.  The job hasn't been so bad: reasonable hours, great coworkers, cute and frustrating students in equal proportions.  The people here are very friendly, and the food continues to be awesome (except, of course, for the bugs, which we haven't given a second chance).

I think one reason we didn't get a ton out of our time here in Seoul is because never fully committed to it the way we did to Japan.  It's a pretty cool city, to be sure, though it's much bigger and, as a result, much less intimate than Osaka.  There are far more expats living here, not all of them English teachers, and the majority of them (in our experience) don't even bother to learn any Korean, such is the strength of the expat bubble in this city.  It's entirely possible to speak only English, eat only foreign food, take in only foreign media and get by just fine in this city, even if you don't live on the military base.  I will at this point mention, putting aside the usual false humility schtick, that we did bother to learn a little Korean, at least.

But...yeah, we came here to make money, not to have the experience of living abroad, not to discover the true Korea.  Granted, we did try to keep busy: we've taken Korean lessons, French lessons, viola lessons, accordion lessons, art classes, belly dance classes, brewing classes, and cooking classes (which explains why we weren't able to save any more money).  We've made a few real friends here, and we have a few new skills to show for our time here, but in general, it was nothing all that special.

The year wasn't without low points, of course: we missed my brother's graduation and my grandmother's funeral.  Jenn's bike was stolen from our nearby subway station.  Four years of not going to the dentist resulted in some very expensive dental work (I won't tell you how many fillings I had, but let's just say that it rhymes with "ten").  I've never been too good at writing through bad feelings.  I have more to say on most of these occurrences, but I don't have it in me right now.  Maybe it'll get jogged loose on the road.  For now, just gonna say that I miss you, Grandma.

And now, a few photos to prove that we are still alive and haven't been replaced by smooth-typing spambots.  Witness the excitement of a year in Seoul (minus the photos of school hijinks, those will come in another post):

Thanksgivukkah Dinner.  Catering by Mr. Harry of Seoul.  Mr. Harry's outfit by Don't Like Shopping.

Our Christmas tree, loving hand-crafted from paint, junkmail, and up-cycled holiday decorations.

Homemade kimchi!  Still haven't gotten the smell out of the fridge.  This is why Korean people have a separate refrigerator for kimchi (seriously!).

A message of encouragement from the unblinking giant cat that watches you on the subway.

At some sort of zodiac-themed attraction by Gwangbukgung Palace.  Probably put here by aliens.

King Sejong invented the Korean alphabet and basically everything else.  His reward is to eternally watch over the selfies that tourists take of their dumb faces.

Installed outside one of Seoul's many, many, many plastic surgery clinics.  We later discovered that this is actually an installation produced by an unrelated art gallery.  You should see what I produced after looking at this too long.

Makin' beer!  This time, sugars and plant matter are fermenting in our closet on purpose.

A lovely surprise from home on our birthdays!  The deliveryman barked out "Happy birthday!  Brother!" before running off in embarrassment.  Thanks, Dan!

Another wonderful birthday present, this one from Mom and Dad.  Pay extra attention to the glass of homebrewed beer!  Pay less attention to the clutter on the cabinet, please.

At our friend/coworker Holly's house, makin' bagels with her two extremely awesome kids Joshua and Ashley.

Turnaround

And with that, we found ourselves back in Seoul again.  After a week-long visa run in Osaka, we were back in the working world, wearing ties and showering every day (sometimes, anyway).  As of press time, we have been teaching at Yum Kwang Continuing Education Center, the after-school academy (hagwon) arm of the enormous Yum Kwang Christian School, for one month.

The job has been refreshingly laid-back: the hours are short, the lesson planning is minimal, and best of all, no one is expected to hang around out of politeness once the day is over.  Our last classes finish at 6:55, and by 7:00, the lights are out and all of the teachers have already left to head home.  Japan, this ain't.

So buckle in, blog fans, because for the next year, Rubber Side Down will be back in Expat Teacher Mode.  Expect some factual tips for bike touring in Japan, flashbacks to some of our untold adventures in Missouri and California, and more expat living wackiness, including...

More kid art (by Harry)!

More food with eyes on it!

More cute kid writing/nationalistic propaganda!

More comically large instruments!

More obscure crafts!

More karaoke (of course)!

More horrific vegetable-themed children's books!

And more charmingly quirky student papers!

Back to the Grind

So how did the concert go?  Did we get to Shimonoseki OK?  What did we do after that?  Did we eat any more insects?

The answers to all of these questions are as follows: fine, yes, more of the same, not yet.  The long answers, however, will be forthcoming in the next few weeks, as will some practical info about biking in Japan and Korea in case anyone's interested.

In the meantime, though, just to keep everyone up to date: we've made it to Seoul, where we begin our job teaching English tomorrow.  Eleven months ago, we left a good job in The City, (where we were) working for the man every night and day.  Now, we're in another The City, working for a different The Man.  Alas, that means that there will soon be an end to these particular Amazing Tales, and those thrilling stories of globe-hopping and running away from snakes will give way to slightly less-thrilling stories of cute children, grammatical mistakes, and weird toilets.

Of course, the original plan was to take month-long work breaks to fund our greasy, showerless way of life, but considering how difficult it's been to find a single long-term job (to say nothing of buying fancy new clothes to wear to work, such as a third pair of socks), we've opted to pack in all of the capitalist goodness into one long year. In a year's time, we'll have socked away enough cash to get our rubber back on the road, but for now, settle in for more English teacherly goodness.

Until we catch up to the present, expect more from our time in Japan and Korea, followed by the aforementioned protips and some flashbacks to our time in Missouri and California.  After that...well, if we run out of material, maybe I'll just put up some of our old posts, replacing "Japan" with "Korea" and "Godzilla" with "kimchi."

Return to Bike Touring

It was now officially time to bid goodbye to Osaka.  As we ate our burritos at El Zocalo, I felt like a thief, a damn liar, and worst of all, a guy who hangs around the high school well after graduation.  We had already bid fond, tearful farewells to our friends (and the friendly staff of El Zocalo) eight months before when we left our jobs, our apartment and our lives in Osaka.  There were final nights out at karaoke, dinners, parties, and promises to have more fun on our return in December.  Then, after our California adventure, we made a triumphant return to Osaka just in time for Christmas.  We tore up the town and were met with warm wishes, lots of drinks, and free lodging from all of our friends.  Tearfully, we wondered why we ever left, and celebrated for two weeks with karaoke, dinners, parties, and promises to have still more fun on our return in March (and nostalgic burritos).

March came quickly, and once again we were greeted warmly by our friends, who still wondered aloud why we ever left, if slightly less enthusiastically than before.  Karaoke, etc., and great fun with great people, but that reality started to set in as we were spotted yet again in El Zocalo, explaining to the staff that, yes, we did go back to America and no, we still don't live in Osaka, we're just...passing through town kinda often.

Now it was the end of April, and our fifth time in Osaka since leaving the country eight months before.  Five burritos in eight months was a bit low for our average, but still enough to feel that we had never left.  By now, our oldest friends in Japan had left for other cities, other countries, and here we were again, having a blast, visiting with some amazing people, but wondering not why we ever left but if in fact we ever did.  It was time to get back on the road.

We have until June 4th to, in visa terms, gtfo of Japan before being tossed out by our collars and the seats of our pants.  In that time, we wanted more cycling, more WWOOFing, and no mountains.  We would get two of these three.


View Larger Map

This time, we would be crossing central Honshu the only way we could: pushing our bikes up more damn mountains.  After revisiting Takarazuka and, eventually, Tottori, we would follow the northwest coast of the island to Hamada, where we intend to WWOOF at some kind of artist's village/cafe/campground/organic farm.  From there, it's a quick (hopefully) ride to Shimonoseki, where we'll hop a ferry for Korea just ahead of the expiration of our visas at the beginning of June.  From there, we bike and WWOOF in Korea until our jobs (TBD) start up, when this blog will transmogrify back into an account of the day-to-day struggles of EFL teachers dealing with wacky students and cross-cultural kerfuffles.

There is, unfortunately, a dearth of information about biking across Honshu, so we've had to put together our own itinerary.  Google Maps is happy to plan out our route for us so long as we pretend that we're a car, which, despite the fact that we have four wheels, brakes, and several hundred pounds of attitude, we are not.  Will our sticktoitiveness and notgiveupedness carry us across this country?  Only time will tell.  Also, we have Clif Bars.

We left town after only a weekend in Osaka, stopping only to rest, tune up our bikes, and spend time with the inimitable Ellie Streichholz:

The Plan: Japan

Having returned to Osaka (a.k.a. "The Big O") from the Philippines, Jenn and I were now ready to begin the Plan proper.  We agreed that, though Japan is one of the more expensive countries on our quaint little planet, it becomes much cheaper when a traveler is sleeping in a tent and traveling by bicycle.  Besides, after three years of Japanese study, we felt Japan would be a good starter country for our Asian tour.

So, having paid lots of paper rectangles to have our various possessions shipped to us here in Osaka or back to the States, we were set to give everything a test ride.  After strenuous preparation and route-planning, of course.

Here, we confer with some locals about what is or is not shakin'.

We were blessed by the immigration officials with a standard 90-day tourist visa, which gives us enough time to see a good chunk of the country before having to make a border run to Korea.  Then, assuming our limbs haven't gotten so muscular that we can no longer get out of bed, we intend to come back to Japan just in time for the rainy season to bike a bit more.  Hopefully, we will be working in Seoul again come July, so we'll be filling as much time as we can until then with biking, camping, and assorted shenanigans.

First, like all good adventurers, we thought it would be wisest to take our long-mothballed equipment on a test ride, just a short four-day ramble from Osaka to Nara, then to Kyoto, then back to Osaka.  See illustration.  SEE IT.


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As of writing this post, we've already completed this leg of the trip, so it has made the transition from "Tentative" to "Good Job!"  What is still tentative, however, is the rest of our trip in Japan, which is approximated below:



View Larger Map

Apart from biking, which does tend to get tiresome after a little bit, we've made plans to WWOOF, and have already joined WWOOF Japan.  Essentially, WWOOF (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) allows us to volunteer at various organic farms (and possibly cafes, artists' communes, hotels, who knows what else) in exchange for food and lodging.  We've been told that it's an excellent way to meet interesting people, learn new skills, see a side of the country that would otherwise be hidden to us, and get free food and lodging.  In addition, we may be stopping at a couple of Zen monasteries to participate in meditation retreats.

So, that about brings us up to speed.  If you'd just gotten used to hi-larious jokes about exotic fruits and dangerous animals, well...too bad.  Hopefully you'll be just as thrilled to hear of such exciting tales of flat tires, rain, and rice farming.  They do have monkeys here, too, so watch out for that.

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!