Day 2 -- Touring the City and Meeting Students

Today, after a Japanese style breakfast at the hotel, we set off to tour the city. I didn't explain as well before, but this is a business course about doing business in Japan and Taiwan. That said, today was not about business, but meeting people in the host Japanese college and touring the city.

Osaka:

We started in Dotonbori. One of us had their luggage lost by the New York airport, so we started  by visiting a Don Quixote (sort of a jack of all trades store). There she bought some clothes, and I bought an SD card converter (yes I gave up for now on making my SD card slot work for now). It was a very interesting store filled with anything from food to USB lighters. Most of Dotonbori we walked around and looked at interesting shops from the outside. It was fairly early, so most of them weren't open yet.
Have some pictures of shops (or their mascot/logos)

This is a logo for a Takoyaki (oct place 

This crab apparently moves while the store is open o.o

This is a blowfish

Not a restaurant, but I wanted to include it anwyay

These guys are a famous comedy duo

Den Den Town:

The sign in the middle says "Den Den Town"

We then then went to Den Den Town (Nipponbashi). This is the Osakan equivalent of Akihabara, which is an city where dorks like me go to get anime and manga themed merchandise, alongside game centers,   and electronics stores. They call these areas "electric streets." I bought a couple figures, and some small presents. Ironically, when I asked a clerk what something was (in Japanese), he responded by pointing and miming a shirt and pants. I haven't the slightest idea why, especially since he understood my question.

A typical ad in Den Den Town

Finally, we went to the Umeda Sky Building. We didn't go to the top, but everyone but me went down to eat at a historically themed restaurant in an area below the Sky Building. Being the crazy man I am, I chose instead to venture away from the group. I wandered the nearby streets, in search of adventure. I visited a family mart (another convenience store) and picked up some food and a magazine for my friend. I had to ask the clerk how to read the title, to make sure I was getting the right one, but it all went very smoothly. People always seem relieved or pleasantly surprised when I don't shriek "YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?" at them. Thankfully there isn't anyone like that in our group >_>

A view of the sky building, from the bottom up

A nice view to eat lunch with

Something that was not the same the first time I went to Japan (in high school) was that many trains have female only cars. This is mainly because of touchy perverts. The crime rate is still insanely low though, so please don't worry about it if you plan on coming here. According to the Japanese professor helping us out, this only applies during rush hour.

Here's a picture or three of rush hour, by the way: 

After our brief visit to the Sky Building, we headed for the Shinkansen (bullet train). Bullet trains, if you don't know, are very fast trains. I believe their top speed is around 200-250 mph. But we're stopping at every stop, so it's still took us around an hour to get to Okayama (which, by the way, is where the university is located).  Nothing else really happened on the train ride.

The Shinkansen

Okayama:

When we got to our next hotel, which is apparently primarily used by some faculty in the school if I read our itinerary correctly, we were all pretty tired. But shortly after is when we met the students. We visited a place in Okayama Daigaku (university) known as the L Café (language café). Here, we met a lot of Japanese students (and some exchange students), and talked to them. I ended up very frequently switching from English to Japanese, which was a little weird, but very fun. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the word(s) "pera pera" thrown around casually as some Japanese students described me to others, which means fluent. Everyone was very nice, and very curious about the US, as well as eager to share things about Japan. One of the girls would occasionally sing a line or two from a One Direction song, which she did well enough to kind of snap me out of the culture hypnosis. Things are noticeably different here, and it's a bit strange to adapt to a new culture without kind of adopting it. It's a little hard to explain...

Anyway, after some socializing, we got together and learned a traditional dance called Uraja. It was fun and interesting to learn, and I have a video of the demonstration. Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr7cgKO3CYw

After the dance, we were taken to the school cafeteria. I had Kitsune Udon, which is Udon noodles with tofu. "Kitsune" means fox in Japanese, and when I asked about the name, I was told that, in legend, foxes like tofu, hence the name. Huh. Nonetheless, the food was very good! Here we talked a lot more, and I got to practice my Japanese a lot. The Japanese students also seemed to be enjoying using their English, which they all had no trouble doing. The only downside to all this is that I'm now completely exhausted. >_<;;

Some jerk eating Kitsune Udon

Also, I've edited my first post with pictures, so be sure to check it out!