You’re Doing Travel Wrong

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Thwarted by the weather!

Ah, travel! The exhilarating experience of upending your entire life to join insufferable crowds, destroy foreign monuments, and consume bizarre foods, all at a premium cost. Sure, you make lifelong memories of standing in long ticket lines, but you always return from your vacation in need of a…vacation.

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Sale! Normally 2,000 Won – but now only 3,900!

The fact is that you’re doing travel all wrong. You could be standing in much longer lines, wearing your own smelly clothes, and paying more money. As an expert traveler (self-certified) let me educate you. (See disclaimer at end)

The first thing you’re doing wrong is staying in a hotel. Maid service, individually wrapped soaps, and a minibar minifridge? No, that won’t do. You need to be staying in Airbnb. Sure they’re destroying the local housing market and forcing out locals, but those people were going to yell at you anyway for stopping on the sidewalk to take a photo of a vintage (“distressed”) door. With an airbnb, you have no idea whether there will be any soap, you might be in a graffiti covered building, and you could get yourself and your host evicted! Ah, memories!

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My Favorite Adventures of 2015

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Adventure!

This post started because I was weary. Not sleepy and tired, but sluggish and unmotivated. Maybe I’ve been a nomad too long. Maybe I’ve been away from work too long. Or maybe I’ve been without a mission too long.

Coincidentally, I downloaded book Level Up Your Life by Steve Lamb. It showed up on the Art of Non-Conformity blog, and resonated with my neediness and video-gaming tendencies. The title refers to the way you gain experience points in games like Dungeons and Dragons or Legend of Zelda or Call of Duty.

Steve encourages you to think of achievements and adventures you want to complete. His suggestions include holding a handstand, speaking a foreign language, or volunteering at a children’s hospital. As I brainstormed what I would like to accomplish I kept thinking I just did something like that!  Here are some of my favorites.

  • Nighttime Segway Ride
  • Raw Shrimp Dinner
  • Cat Island
  • First Class Transpacific Flight
  • Opening Day Oktoberfest
  • Two Nights in a Bazaar

As you read things, think of the adventures you’ve had recently, as well as the ones you would like to have.

Nighttime Segway ride

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The Romans built the forum with the Segway in mind.

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“Your Way Isn’t The Another”

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It’s a big green grapefruit drink monster!

One of the enjoyable aspects of living in Japan has been the signs. I loved seeing the street-sign art in Italy; little easter eggs everywhere. While that kind of graffiti won’t be tolerated in Japan, their un-altered signs have been have been helpful, amusing, and sometimes just weird.

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I’ll take the Egg Slut Plate.

Helpful

Wow – there’s English pretty much everywhere. Especially airports, train stations, Starbucks. Moving to Japan is really not enough to guarantee that you’ll learn Japanese. (The signs are also in Chinese, Korean, and universal pictures.)

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How I Learned to Love Routines

Routines suck. They’re dull and boring. Who wants the same, old same-old? Well, I do.

Leaving my job and moving to Italy, Japan and Germany was great. I was freed from the boring old routines! No going to work at the same time every day. No more driving the same commute! No eating at the same place for lunch. No going to the gym every afternoon. No gym membership at all! No more shopping at the same Whole Foods grocery store. Everything is new and wonderful and shiny.

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Uber Shiny!

Except, a lot of those things were useful and even healthy. Without them, I was starting over.

Here’s what I learned about routines.

  • Routines lead to success!
  • Routines are efficient
  • But you need breaks

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Silly-Billy Language – Japanese

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Gratuitous Hello Kitty

I recently watched Eddie Izzard’s hilarious take on Latin being a silly-billy language. “It has a nominative, a vocative, an accusative, a genitive, a dative and an ablative…. Quad the f—k?”  As I spend this year learning new languages I’ve noticed that Latin is not alone. There’s lots of silly languages. Since I’m in Japan right now, we’ll start with Japanese. After all:

  • It’s really five different languages
  • With ten different words for every number
  • And squiggly pictures instead of an alphabet

First some caveats, since I know this post will go microbial or viral or whatever. My intent is to amuse, not offend. Japanese is no sillier than any other language. I don’t discourage anyone from learning it. The quirks are what makes it fun. I’m having a great time living in Japan, speaking in Japanese, meeting wonderful people, and eating all your sushi.

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Whine

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OK readers, switch on Pandora radio and find some pouty, minor-chord tunes. Break out the cheeseboards and stemless glassware. It’s time for a full-on whine session.

What do I have to whine about on this trip-of-a-lifetime?

(Besides the fact I can’t get Pandora. And don’t even mention Netflix.)

Well, here are the top 4.

  • Japanese is hard
  • Everything I do is wrong
  • I can’t read menus
  • Moving is a pain

Japanese is hard

There. I admit it. For today only, I’m going to say it’s hard. Difficult. Frustrating. Dizzying, confusing, confounding. It’s really just the verbs and the nouns. And the adjectives. And the prepositions. So basically just everything.

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A Day in the Life

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Next to the very handsome guy is a clock made from tiny water fountains. Every minute the little fountains change to show the new time. That’s technology!

Here’s what my life is like in Japan.

The morning started with a Skype call with my niece. It’s 8:30am on Tuesday my time. 6:30 pm Monday hers. We practiced speaking in Japanese and then made plans for her upcoming trip to Japan. I don’t know which is cooler – that she wants to learn Japanese, or that she’s scratching an item off her bucket list before she finished high school.

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First Impressions of Japan

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“He’s back!”

Japan. I can’t believe I’m here. Until now you were just the land of samurais, sake, and sushi. Godzilla and earthquakes. Walkmans, and six-sigma. Capitalist invaders (Rising Sun) who succumbed to a lost decade. Robot toilets.

You’re known for being disdainful of foreigners (gaijin), but you’ve been completely nice to me. You have TGI Friday’s, Starbucks, and Legends sports bar. Your toilets don’t make sense.

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