1. Tourists wearing “I <3 New York t-shirts”.  Our friends wearing I <3 NY shirts” and pretending to be tourists at the Times Square Olive Garden is awesome though.

2. MTA’s go to catchphrase, “This train is delayed due to train traffic ahead.  Thank you for your patience..”  Our message to MTA, “Dude, we have no choice”.

Stuck on the subway? Why wait? Grab a beer.

3.  Pushy masses and massive egos.

4. The skirt lifting Marilyn Monroe effect of the rank air bursting through the subway vents.

5. Careless spitters in crowded areas (yes an aspiring rappers accidentally hacked a loogie on Sarah in Herald Square once.  Yum!  He gave her a cd from his trashbag as consolation).

As I’m winding down on my year long Korean soujourn  I’m finding myself in a strange place that I know all too well these days.  I’m finding myself yet again quitting a job, moving out of an apartment, bequeathing the last of my earthly possessions and saying goodbye to all my awesome new friends that I’ve met over the course of the last year and setting off for unknown adventures in strange lands.  I’m getting far too good at hitting Alt-Ctrl-Del on life, but that’s just how you have to do things if you indeed intend on doing things,  I always say.

Last year at this time I was in Chicago, working as a research editor for a few magazines and living in a nice apartment in one of Chicago’s more bohemian neighborhoods. It was sweet I tell you, I had all the record stores, supermercados, coffee shops, old world Polish barber shops and used book stores a kid could ever want but I was just plain bored of it all!  Things got too comfortable so I set sail for South Korea as I prepared for my new job as an English teacher. I wasn’t sure what to expect, as I had never taught anybody anything since I was tutoring kids in Italian in college for beer money.

Deciding to finally make time for this year long adventure has seriously been the best thing I have ever done for myself and is something I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone, if they ever asked me.   2009 was a great year  in many respects as I  had a chance to work abroad which was always a goal of mine, it has allowed  me to teach which was another goal of mine and allowed me to travel all around Asia so I could be able to cross this continent off my list (only3 more to go after South America!)  This year has seen me  bike across the streets of Beijing, go shopping in the slums of Mumbai, swim with the sharks in Busan, chant sutras with Buddhist monks at 4am in a tiny temple atop a mountain in the dead of winter, ring in the new year in Tokyo’s Roppongi district,  jump off of moving trains on more than a few occasions, lose cell phones, wipe bloody noses and learn to read a foreign language. Life on the road is grand.  This is the life for me.  Quito, I can’t wait to make your acquaintance. See you soon!

Onwards, to Korea!  Upwards, out of the gutter!

And that’s the end of Season 2: Tokyo.  After much, much, much delay we’ll now finally be moving into Season 3: Seoul.  I could go on and on about my battle with burnout and how it has led to our mangled schedule, but one of the effects of burning out is that you’re tired all the time.  So instead of ranting, I think I’ll go to bed.

Enjoy the episode and check out the Vivian Girls, whose track “Where Do You Run?” nicely wraps up our final moments in Tokyo.

Couch in search of a good home.