A Tale of People

I gave my talk this afternoon, chatted with some other conference attendees about my research and then had to run to the Nagasaki train station to catch my train to Osaka.

While I was buying my ticket to Osaka, I overheard an American voice in the counter next to mine. Turns out it belonged to Ethan, a Masters student from Florida (by way of Germany) who within 5 minutes of meeting wanted me to watch his bag while he went to the bathroom. Luckily for him I a) am not the thieving type and b) had enough crap to carry without stealing his luggage too. We rode as far as Hakata together before he went on to Beppu and I caught my train to Osaka.

My train turned out to be a Shinkansen, also known as the bullet train. And boy did it go fast! The countryside passed by in a blur, at least what parts of it I could see since the sun had set by then.

I made it to the Osaka station and promptly put on my "confused American tourist" look (a look that does not take much acting). A nice young man named Yudichi took the bait,and lucky enough for me, turned out to be going to the same subway station I was going to. I obediently followed him from station to subway to station while we made small talk in a mixture of English/Japanese/mime. He was kind enough to lead me straight to my hostel's door. Where there was this pile of slippers:

And a sign saying "Shoes are strictly forbidden."

The hostel's nice enough, although I'll only be here long enough to rest my head before moving on to Koya-San tomorrow. As far as I know, Jana is currently barreling towards Osaka on a night bus from Tokyo, and we plan to meet up tomorrow morning. I'm sharing a room with Erica, a JET teacher originally from Guam, who thankfully shares my desire to keep our room's air conditioning set at a cool 20 deg C - 'cuz it is HOT and MUGGY in Osaka!