We are in a bit of a predicament at the moment – we’ve been searching for work here for over a month and have come to the realization that other than our tutoring gigs its unlikely that a real job will come along until April.  The catch here of course is that there are no guarantees, a tough job market, and a long time between now and then to get by on fairly sparse work.

So, this begs the question – what do we do?

We have options, the best one currently being Korea.  However due to their weak currency it certainly wouldn’t be nearly as great of a deal as Japan and would take a whole lot of work to uproot and resettle ourselves.  But, we might just not have a choice on this one.

At this point we don’t know what we’re going to do, but we’ll certainly be doing our best to figure it out.

Friday Lag Time: 19 sec Max HTTP Connections/Min.: 4 Image Visibility: 203 sq px

Saturday Lag Time: 12 sec Max HTTP Connections/Min.: 9 Image Visibility: 543 sq px

Sunday Lag Time: 32 sec Max HTTP Connections/Min.: 2 Image Visibility: 0px

As we near the end of Season 1, we’d like to take a brief break from blogging about our Tokyo adventures and share some of the untold stories from our time in Vietnam.  I would like to reserve a couple blog posts to pay homage to the people who made our experiences possible, who in effect gave us the material for the final minutes of Season 1.  One of our tenets is that we seek out local adventures, and foreigners can only accomplish such a thing through local friends.

You might recognize these hooligans from Episode 5, where we crashed the Vietnamese wedding in Buon Me Thout…or rather, where the Vietnamese wedding crashed us.  Rob and I shared the pleasure of teaching English classes with them, and Buon on Me Thout was just the first chapter in a long epic of good times and good people.  There were dinners and drinks, and drinks and dinners, and unsurprisingly, almost every time involved multiple rounds of “100%.”

I know it sounds like our time with them was full of drinking…well, frankly, it was, and it was a past-time no one complained about.  I will never forget when Mr. Hanh (below top), one of the primary instigators, exclaimed at the end of one of our big dinners together, “This is fantastic – 2 cultures, with different languages, coming together to laugh and drink.”

But drinking beer isn’t *all* we did.  Mr. Trung (above bottom) treated us to whiskey!  We also went bowling, rode elephants, sang karaoke, and played soccer.   They taught me how to play badminton; I taught them how to play soccer.  We tried to throw a Thanksgiving party; they ended bringing cases of beer, ordering extra food, and even giving us goodbye presents.  Check out our flickr collection for highlights: Students from the Bank

I think Mr. Trung, the owner of both the Bank and the bottle of Macallan, said it wisely and said it best: “Learning English is important, but friends are more important.  You will always have friends in Vietnam.”

It is my sincere hope that they travel to the United States when I am home, and I can show them the time that they showed me.

I’d like to give a special thanks to Space Captain (or as I like to call them, “Mike Stitsinger and the Stitstones”) for letting us use their awesome song “Adventures in Apprehension” in Episode 9.  I dare you to get the tune out of your head in the next three days.

You should check out their site at www.spacecaptain.net — if you live in the North Eastern United States you stand a good chance of seeing them play, and, as indicated by the above candid, they do a pretty killer live set.  And if you’re out of range from Northampton, MA, order up a copy of their new album Opposite Day.  I have it on my iPod.  Why don’t you?

While Rob flies back to America to finalize his divorce, Brian & Matt embark on a magical journey from Saigon to Tokyo.

And that’s all, folks.  Jet Set Zero Season 1: Saigon is a wrap.

It’s been a bizarre, eye-opening experience from the beginning of the pre-season to this huge milestone for me.  Considering that I had no idea what I was doing when I slapped Episode 1 together four months ago, the following 8 episodes fell in place with such a fluid blur that I hardly even remember assembling them.

Partly that could be the result of the bleary, coffee and beer filled all-nighters which have commonly constituted my Sunday night editing experience since September.  This final episode was no exception: as I watched the sun rise through the dirty frosted glass of our mostly unheated guesthouse common room where I’d spent the past 14 hours, I knew that as Season 1 drew to a close something else had begun:

Season 2: Tokyo.

We first met the members of the Jet Lag DJ collective while living in Saigon.  They were a great group of people that really impressed us with their willingness to introduce us to nightlife in Saigon and what they were doing within it.

Saigon is a bustling city with a nightlife all of its own.  However the variety and range of after hours scenes so common in major cities worldwide are just beginning to take hold in Vietnam.  One group is leading the charge to bring electronic music to Ho Chi Minh city and with it, a whole new element to night life in Vietnam.

Jet Lag works on a simple philosophy of bringing together great DJs with events that expose Vietnam to electronic music.  One aspect of the group that we were particularly impressed by was the offering of no-cover events.  For a lot of people, paying to get into a club is a hassle, but for a majority of the youth in HCMC, a typical cover of 100,000 Dong or $6 is far beyond the realm of possibility.  By promoting free events, the group is able to open up a whole new style of music to the city.

We were lucky enough to head out with them to a few of their big events and filmed a short segment on it.  Its a lot of great people, having fun and enjoying some music that is quite scarce otherwise.  It should give you a pretty good idea of what its like.

If you are ever in Vietnam, I highly recommend you check out one of their events.  They run regular weekly parties, as well as larger festivals.  Though we haven’t attended any of the festivals we’re pretty sure they’re worthwhile as you really can’t beat the location.

What do you picture when you think of Tokyo? If you’re anything like me, you might expect layers of brightly colored signs stacked on a massive high-rise, or a river of outlandishly costumed teenagers silhouetted against an enormous televised billboard. You probably wouldn’t expect to see a tree-lined suburban street, or cookie-cutter subdivision. And yet, of these two contrasting images, the latter has become much more emblematic of my short time here. We live in a city called Kawasaki, in Kanagawa Prefecture, an affordable distance from the bustling hubs that comprise downtown Tokyo. Our neighborhood is quiet, and the people in it seem to have more in common with the commuters from our old neighborhood in Pinehurst, WA than they do with the flamboyant gamers and anime-inspired maids found elsewhere in the city. Despite being a welcome reprieve from raucous Saigon–and despite the the wealth of characters in our guesthouse– our new neighborhood doesn’t register very high on the adventure-meter. To make matters worse, the cost of any given trip into Tokyo ranges from between $6 RT, to $12 RT (unacceptably high for our unemployed souls). So I’ve started a daily routine that I like to call the Kanagawa Constitutional.

The process is pretty simple. Step outside. Pick a direction. Walk that direction until you get bored, or your back starts to hurt. Walk the opposite direction for the same amount of time. Repeat daily, or as desired.

So far, my discoveries have been pretty underwhelming, and include a police station, an orange tree, and a small city park resembling a moon crater in both shape and overall appeal. I’ve gone uphill three times, and downhill twice, but tomorrow I’ll attempt to follow the steps of our brave crewman, Kevin, who found a 99¥ store during his own Kanagawa Constitutional. Sometimes, on the walk, I close my eyes and envision myself stumbling upon a grove of trees tucked between apartment buildings, bearing ripe jobs –and the adventures those jobs would afford us– ready to pluck.

We’re known for a lot of things, however timing has never been one of them.  When we made our final decision to move to Japan, we had spent weeks reading forum postings about the reasonable condition of jobs, the exciting life the city had to offer, and the seemingly acceptable exchange rate of 100 Yen to the dollar.

One month later we arrived, eyes full of neon and dreams.  And with those shiny eyes we watched the economy further implode and the yen soar to ever increasing heights.  At the time when we exchanged our money in Tokyo we had seen 20% of our money disappear.

Next we watched widespread layoffs.  All of a sudden there was less money in the city for luxuries such as private English lessons, and an excess of English teachers with experience in the city.  The reasonable job outlook was replaced with stories of professionals from other failing economies heading over to ride out the storm with and ESL career.

“Believe it or not; with the US economy in the tank and things being what they are, the school I work for gets quite a few resumes each week from a lot of professional people (lawyers, engineers, and IT folks, not so many doctors) who are considering packing it in and doing eikaiwa [independent conversation school] work for a year or three.”

And everyone’s favorite job application response:

“To date, 1655 resume(s) have been submitted through […] for this position.”

Then came the holiday season.  We had arrived early to kick off the search process before the holidays hit, but with no solid leads in sight we ran into a near two week period where getting job became next to impossible.

In short we managed to arrive at what may have literally been the worst time to teach English in Japan in the last ten plus years.  Failing economy, soaring yen, glut of English teachers.

This will be an adventure.

Episode 8 reveals a startling turn in our story– but one we’ve known about for a long time now. Dan Vandermark, one of four cast members of Jet Set Zero, left Saigon and the show in October. We have mentioned so many times before on this blog that this company– cast and crew– have grown to be something of a family. We’ve shared the stress of long Seattle workdays, the trials of establishing ourselves in a new country, and have experienced the most personal and candid moments together, and so we don’t find it easy to let someone go. Dan was as much a part of this team as anyone, and his wisdom and caution often balanced our typically impulsive tendencies. Dan helped us make “good” decisions, when, much of the time, we wanted to make “fun” decisions.

Dan’s departure came on top of the mounting stresses of our life in Vietnam. He never did quite make peace with Saigon– a harsh city of hectic streets, noise and pollution. More importantly though, Dan had a deep sense of responsibility toward his students, and felt that the indifference and lack of organization in many of the private language schools betrayed his values. I will never forget the conversation I had with him where he first expressed this idea– a deep insight into the source and abuse of our privilege in Vietnam– and I consider it one of the seminal enlightenments of my time there.

Dan was eminently reflective and among the funniest of us and I know that these traits will continue to carry him forward in life, from this adventure to the next. After Dan left Saigon, he traveled to Australia, chasing clean skies and burden-free adventure. While there, he made friends that opened him to new experiences in different parts of the country and ultimately took him to Fiji. He is now back home in frigid Oswego, where I am sure that his sense of humor and good stories warm the windows of The Raven Tavern and inspire others to seek their piece of the jet set life.

Dan is a friend like no other, and while we miss him daily, we wish him the best.

While the crew enjoys one final Vietnamese adventure on Phu Quoc island Dan packs his bags and says goodbye to Jet Set Zero.

Aaaaaand we’re back, after a lengthy interlude.  Upon completing Episode 7 I needed a little time to recover emotionally: too much of Rob’s struggle was a reflection of the events of my own life and the combined toll of that, a number of family health problems, the holiday season, and my trip to Tokyo delayed the airing of this episode by two weeks.  I apologize for the delay; we’re going to try to pick up the pace to make up for lost time.

It was sad to see Dan go (I personally knew him from college in New York), but I understand his predicament and I think he made the right choice in the end.  For a few weeks in Season 2 you’ll be seeing me stand in as a replacement, but we’re looking for a full time cast addition so keep those applications rolling!