we came in to osaka thru kansai last night. the flight was verrrry comfortable and we all slept most of the way. haider & i are sharing a room and majid & haider have one. we have 2 different helpers staying in the same hotel. one is a panasonic rep. and the other is a language facilitator and tour guide.
we slept early at 10 (after eating an amazing japanese dinner; mostly of fish and chicken). hamad and majid called at 4 am ... i had been up at 3. we got some room service, learned some essential japanese vocab words, and then went sightseeing at 5 am. we found a mcdonald's, a convenience store, a photobooth (we took pics, but no digital copy) and a shrine.
someone was kind enough to take our pic, then we returned to the hotel to eat breakfast and start our day.
we spent the morning learning about the matsushita business philosophy. matsushita is an electronics production company that owns panasonic. the presentation was really interesting. i was especially surprised by their commitment to the environment. they plan to reduce C02 emissions by 300k tons next year (altho of how many total?)
for lunch we had italian ... which was raw snapper followed by an unknown soup and then pasta with dried fish and then veal. not exactly the italian cuisine with which i am familiar
we spent the afternoon at the house of history where we learned a little too much about konosuke matshushita, the founder of the company.
we all fell asleep on the car ride home and then took a nap until it was dinner time.
for dinner we went to a traditional sukiyaki (cook as you like) house. we ate saga beef, which is finely marbled meet. it is cooked in sugar and soy sauce and then dipped into raw eggs before eating. the food tasted wayyy better than i expected- it was probably actually the best meal that i have had all summer. i'm also getting pretty good with chopsticks, i could handle the beef and noodles and onions, but i crushed the tofu while trying to pick it up ... 2 more weeks to practice
after dinner we walked back to the hotel through a shopping arcade. there was a light rain, which helped cool us off in the warm evening. we got back too early to sleep, so we went out
again to look for ??? anything. we found convenience shops open, but the mall was all closed by 11pm. even at the cinema, the last showing was at 840 or 910. sooo we started to head back, but then we stumbled into an arcade. it was surprisingly occupied, mostly by chain-smoking, aging men. we drove taxis around, raced each other, and then had a drum-off (think drumline; here's the best scene of the movie, but if you haven't seen the whole thing you should probably go rent it right now.)on our way back to the hotel, we ran into some b-girls practicing their routine. they were pretty good and we tried to offer our services to improve the performance- but they were so focused that they didn't really notice our efforts. maybe it is we who need more practice.
tomorrow we wake up earrrrrrly (6 hrs from now) to go to kyoto to visit a palace and raft along a river. i'm sure there will be more pictures & stories soon (universal studios on sat!!!!)
sayonara
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