Oh boy, keeping up with this blog is going to be much harder than I anticipated. We are continually on the move and there always seems to be a lot of things happening. My group which consists of five lovely young ladies by the names of Amy, Elyssa, Kate, Samara, and Paris made it into Osaka, figured out which bus to board( I thankfully didn't have much to do with this or we'd still be there) to get us into Nambi which is the center for shopping and dining in Osaka. I think it was about a forty five minute ride. We had a bit of trouble locating our hotel but after a bit of a trek while lugging our luggage behind us ( I looked pretty pitiful) we made it safely. The hotel staff was very friendly and I was impressed to find a comfy jammy waiting for me on my bed.. such sweetness! I quickly freshened up (not easy to do because the plumbing, toilets, and showers are very different here) and met the girls for dinner. We'd passed a restaurant on our way in and we proceeded to check it out. It was super confusing but funny at the same time because it's very common here to simply select dishes from a counter and fill your tray and then pay on your way out according to how many empty dishes you have yet when we tried this the attendant appeared to admonish us and motioned us back to our seats. She said "wait ten minutes for rice" but we waited and waited. People came and were served and still we waited. It turns out that they were preparing fresh dishes as well as rice for us! Such great care, I felt special. The food was delicious but I was a bit frustrated (okay lots) because I don't know how to use chopsticks and that 's all they had at the table. My travel buddies are all experts and made it seem easy. Truth be told I didn't look to graceful using mine but I somehow managed to eat my chicken, veggies and rice. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you're hungry. Looking back on it I'm amazed we didn't fall into our soup bowls from sheer exhaustion. By this point we'd been up and traveling for about twenty four hours.
Back at the hotel my bed was super hard and my bed was filled with what appeared or felt to be a type of bean but I was so exhausted it didn't take long for me to fall asleep. I woke up the next morning feeling much better. But now it was time to try and figure out the shower and toilet thing. First of all the toilets are  low to the ground so you have to squat to use it so I will either have great glutes when arrive back in WI or I will have fallen and can't get up! But there are also toilets that are more like ours except that they have the lovely baday options as well as the option of musical selections that you can play to drown certain things out and give you more privacy. I love this :) As for the shower there really isn't one. The toilet is kept in one room and a bathtub is kept in another room but it's not used to bathe in but rather to soak yourself in nice hot water. They're super tiny but deep.You have to bathe before you sit in this tub. Anywho, in order to bathe you sit on a little bench (naked of course) and you use a hand help shower spigot to wash yourself. There is a special nob that you use to shut the water off while you suds up to conserve water. The floor has a drain that allows the water to drain away. It's really a very efficient way of doing things. I'll explain more this topic later.
I'm super tired right now because although it's 9:50 am Friday WI time it is almost 1:00 am Saturday here in Japan. I will try and catch you up as soon as I can and post more pics too.
Sayonara from Japan
Araceli