I’ve been working to get up country-by-country photo galleries from our trip. I’ve now posted those galleries for our cycling trip from the USA through half of New Zealand. Check them out on the PHOTOS tab above. The rest of New Zealand and Asia will be going up over the next couple of weeks.

How did I get so wet on this train? Oh? A typhoon, you say?

In the arrivals gate, I spent about 20 minutes and a small fortune on a payphone demanding keys and directions from a non-English speaker before I realized that I was calling the wrong number. We didn’t have an address, as Julian’s building is unmarked, and we weren’t sure which neighborhood to go to to wait for him since his teaching assignments changed every day. So we sat in the Tokyo airport, the last stop on our whirlwind 14-month trip, for the first time at a loss for what to do.

Tokyo: Beware!

Eventually, we chose a neighborhood that had come up in my many emails with Julian and seemed centrally located to a ton of train lines. Through miracles of iPhone technology, we were able to get a hold of him via email at a break in class and communicate- more or less- where we were. We found a crowded, over-priced American style diner and sipped at our $6 coffees- careful not to finish them too quickly and, thus, lose our right to sit wedged in the one free table we found where we were miraculously able to stash our Godzilla-sized backpacks. Julian came to retrieve us not too much later because he had been let out early on account of the typhoon. Did I mention it was raining?

Julian

This was not the coffee that we drank, but maybe we would have felt more at home if we did. I’m talking about the Kilimanjaro, obviously.

Ju and R walking in Narima district, typhoon-ready

After disembarking the train in his neighborhood, we sloshed through the rain, which was coming at us at a right angle, for a good 15 minutes before coming to his very tiny, very Japanese, ‘apartment’. It was basically a boarding house where each of the eight tenants had their own doll-house sized room and shared laundry, toilets, and showers. There was one shower for eight adults. And we made ten. Julian graciously heated up some pasta on his hot-plate (no kitchen, obvs) and after we finished doing the dishes, we washed up ourselves in the sink- the lone water source (aside from toilet and shower) and single concession to the amenities that most adults take for granted as tools for basic hygiene and sanity.

What else could go wrong??

This story is not meant to highlight my own high-maintenance attitude, but goes to show that it is an arrogant traveler who thinks that having a full passport means that there are no surprises left. We were more stressed out on our arrival in Japan than we had been since being held up at knifepoint in Honduras. The thing that was different about this arrival versus all of the others, of course, was that this time we had a plan: so there was something to go wrong. Every other time, we were just winging it, so we couldn’t have messed it up if we tried. We ended up having a fantastic time in Tokyo despite our uneasy arrival, the very pronounced cultural divide, and the fact that Japan is the most God-awfully expensive country on the face of the planet. But we’ll get to all that later….

Smart-phone duels!

iPhone 5: now, with extra Gravity!

Silly! You can’t dance if you only have one foot!

Gas masks in the subway because YOU NEVER KNOW

My absolute favorite meal: yuk hoe. It’s a plateful of raw ground beef with a raw egg on top. Delicious!

I wonder what the top part says

Rabbit on a roof

We hit all the prescribed sights on the tourist list: the charming Insadong antique district, the hectic Namdaemun Market, the flashy Myeongdong shopping district, and one of the five palaces that still survive in the middle of downtown Seoul. We felt like we could only take on one palace after all the temples and historic villages we’d seen in the past 14 months, so we opted to visit Changdeokgung, which is attached to Biwon, a ‘secret garden’ for royal use only. We joined the obligatory English language tour and found ourselves trailing along the back of the group and making faces at each other at each stop. We had officially had enough of it all. We just wanted to go home. This is no knock on the garden or the city or tour groups or anything- we were just ready to go.

The entrance to Changdoekgung

Typical traditional Korean architecture… with a suspiciously similar paint job to every temple we’ve seen in the whole country

Local girls, chillin’

One of the main garden buildings

Groovy ceiling design

A leafy oasis

It was so nice to return to Attila’s apartment at the end of the day in Seoul, knowing that we would not be sleeping in a hotel room again for a long, long time. Our next stop would be Tokyo, where we’d stay with my brother, then on to the States, where we already had a roster of friends and family lined up to take us in. Just the other day, back home in California, a good friend of mine introduced me to the K-Pop craze that is sweeping the nation: PSY’s Gangnam Style, which immortalizes the Gangnam district in Seoul where we stayed with Attila. So it all comes full circle.

A side street outside the palace

Residential alley

Hardhats required: this was not a tour for the faint of heart.

It was really a momentous occasion for R and I because we hadn’t been apart more than 3 or 4 hours at a time during the past 10 months, but we went our separate ways for and entire day on this one. R was supposed to go off to do an overnight temple stay, but it didn’t really come together so he just bought a few bottles of soju and watched American sitcoms on the laptop. I, on the other hand, paid US$120 to get up with all the morning commuters and make my way to the office of Tour DMZ, where I was put on a bus with about 50 other tourists to make the 35 mile trip from downtown Seoul to the DMZ- the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.

First stop was Dorasan Station, which would be the first South Korean train station to connect the two Koreas….if a train ever runs.

The DMZ is surprisingly close to Seoul and not so very far from the North Korean capital of Pyeongyang

Like I said

Tourists line up to buy ‘tickets’ to the platform for a photo op. Of course I bought one! We were told that if we hold onto it, we can change it in for a real one when the trains start running. Any day now….

These two teenage guards checked tickets and heroically kept their cool as several busloads of tourists descended upon them with shutters clicking

The tracks to Pyeongyang. Not a tumbleweed in sight.

Oh good! That should do it!

Turns out that this whole railroad to peace thing is just South Korea’s attempt to finally get that high-speed bullet train to Paris that they’ve been so sorely needing. Rail travel: the way of the future!

The DMZ tour is pretty much at the top of the Things To Do list for any visitor to Seoul. It marks the contentious border between two countries that are still technically at war- one in which the US played an essential part. The United Nations Command now officially monitors the DMZ, though US troops are still a very visible presence and both North and South Korea have their own soldiers securing their respective sides of the border. Political importance aside, a trip to the DMZ is pretty much the only way the average American can ‘step foot’ in North Korea. And the only way to get to the DMZ is to be shepherded by an official DMZ tour company, which is why I shelled out a ton of dollars for the privilege of posting these photos on the blog.

An ice cream delivery to the DMZ

Cuddly North and South Korean soldier figures were there to keep the mood light

All kinds of crazy things have happened in the DMZ over the years: axe murders, defectors making run for the border, and the kick-off of the Cold War. The tour was ripe with all kinds of stories about life in North Korea, villages that still exist in the DMZ, and the follies of observing protocol at DMZ sites. One man in my group snapped a few photos on his digital camera when we were out of the ‘photo zone’ and was instantly descended on by soldiers who scrolled through and erased the offending photos.

Yep, that’s North Korea. Hey, is that a WalMart?

Do not step up

A bullet-riddled rail car remains in place right outside the border fence

Border of the DMZ

The tour took us through highlights like the dank and creepy 3^rdTunnel, the sterile Dorasan Train Station, and Freedom Bridge, where an old train engine sat all twisted and shot full of holes- a testament to the violent history of the place. The main event was our 15-minute visit to a conference room in the Joint Security Area, a room that technically straddles the border between the two Koreas. We all took obligatory photos of ourselves standing with one foot on each side of the line, then were ushered back on the bus for Seoul.

Our only glimpse of a North Korean soldier, watching us watching him. How Meta.

South Korean soldiers were inexplicably stationed directly in front of walls. In case they attack?

A badass-looking South Korean solider guarding the shit out of that conference room!

This is what all the fuss is about. A concrete beam marks the border between North and South Korea

A guard stands straddling the border, demarcated by the UN flag

The Bridge of No Return, looking a little worn around the edges. But I guess it doesn’t get much use these days.

For $120, I had to ask myself  ‘was it worth it?’ The tour was short on thrills and excitement and photo ops were heavily restricted- which is totally reasonable- but the importance of the place really sank in after I left.  An article in the San Francisco Chronicle called the DMZ ‘partly kitschy, partly creepy and wholly compelling’ which totally sums it up.