Hard to believe it took 3 days to get the lay of the land and on Japanese time (yea, I know, must be hard).
Let Savannah sleep in today and then we wandered the streets and alleys of the eclectic and spotless Osaka (spotless for 2.5 million people anyway). We had lunch and started to brush off our sign language - really wanted a coffee but could not order it. Having said that, it's amazing how fast the family tongue comes back.
Worked our way back to Kyoto today and while in the gargantuan Osaka station (4th business train station in the world), a young gal stopped to offer direction on the next few set of trains (must have looked pretty lost but the station is insane - see Google pic below).
Joined up with the delegation today and finished with the official welcome dinner - 50 people were there to great and host and we were showered with gifts - it was interesting to try and eat, stand, shake hands, bow, "arigato" all at once but it was a great experience to see how the tradition of gift giving as I know it was woven into an official ceremony. I feel pretty bad about my wrapping job.
Savannah did pretty good with all the interesting foods that was served - eel, snapper, wasabi, octopus and some foods that we simply could not put a label to.
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