How not to travel in Japan

Yesterday I managed to get from my hotel to the meeting place where I collected my orientation packet and was picked up by my host family.  It was not an enjoyable experience.  First off, I had two very large bags.  Maneuvering them was difficult to say the least.  Secondly, it was about 35 degrees C, or 95F and very humid.  Here is a picture I managed to take out the window of my hotel.  Osaka is not the prettiest city.

I started from my hotel after going over the directions one last time with someone at the front desk.  This was in part because they only had maps written in kanji (Chinese derived characters) which I did not know how to read.  With that I set off for the first train station.  The station was part of the Osaka subway line, but in an elevated segment.  I put my money in the machine, guessed what my fare would be, collected my ticket, and passed through the gate.  When a train arrived the air conditioning was a huge relief.  I rode my two stops and got off.  When I got back to street level I put my ticket in the gate in order to exit again, and it stopped me.  I'm not entirely sure why, but I may have bought a ticket for the wrong line. (I may have bought an outbound ticket instead of an inbound ticket.  I went up to a window which was luckily staffed, apologized, and expalined that I had no clue what was going on.  The attendant looked at the ticket, and then waved me through.  I'm sure that I paid enough, I just probably bought the wrong ticket.

Now the next challenge presented itself in finding the station for the Hankyu line.  I walked out onto the street into the full bore of noise and heat which gets trapped in the city.  I spotted the station about a block away and hauled everything down the street and up the steps.  I faced a new machine.  This one had no button for English, but that had been so little help last time that it didn't really matter.  I checked the fare to the station I wanted, paid and received a ticket.  For a moment I thought I was at the wrong station, because it wouldn't let me select the line I thought I wanted, but I read the signs again and was reassured that I was at least going the correct direction.  (Towards Kobe, not Kyoto.)  After just one stop the driver made several announcements which included mention of the station I wanted.  I was uncertain, in part because the train said Umeda, instead of Kobe or someplace in the direction I wanted.  I got off the train to take a closer look at the signs and try and figure out what to do.  Upon closer examination of the station, I realized that there were 5 platforms I could choose from.  The next train that came to the platform I waited on said Umeda as well.  However, I could see on the next platform over a mention of the station I was bound for.

I made the decision to cross over and check the signs.  I follwed the signs for the furthest platform and waited there.  The next train to come in was a limited express for Kobe-Sannomiya.  A quick check of the chart showed that one of the only other stops it made was Nishinomiya Kitaguchi.  I grabbed my bags and pulled them onto the train with me.  After about 15 minutes we arrived at Nishinomiya Kitaguchi.  I again took my bags and headed out into the heat on the platform.  I hauled everything up the stairs and headed for the North exit (luckily I can read some basic stuff).  As I came down the stairs I was greeted by Sean, the coordinator of the Kwansei Gakuin exchange program, and Anin, another UBC student I knew from a Japanese class a few terms earlier.

It took me quite a while to stop dripping sweat on everything after I got inside.  I was soon introduced to my host family and ushered down to the parking garage before we made the 15 minute drive back to the house.