May 13th, with the first day down at Osaka Metropolitan University lets recap what we did from my perspective. The day started at 8:50 am leaving our lodging (the Fraser Residence Inn Nankai) and traveled on the Namba metro system officially for the first time (as a group.) I found navigating the metro stations interesting as you only need to scan a card or insert a ticket and get to your platform while dodging the sea of people heading in the opposite direction; in America people don’t really use the same type of train systems as they do in Japan besides big cities like New York.
As we reached OMU and entered our new reality, the group got ushered into a classroom and started our introduction with the professors and students. After the OMU faculty got to know us, we left to another classroom to begin our first lecture SS314. This first lecture we were introduced to our month long project the Kikocho. After the class we got to eat lunch at the university. Later in the day we started our Com221 continuing our lectures for this study abroad.
In the afternoon we met our OMU buddies for the first time in our introduction meeting. During this time we bonded and created new friendships with the students from Japan.
In my group, I learned a new game that Japanese kids would play where you would sit in a circle and hold both of your hands towards the center and one person would say a phrase in Japanese which means lets go together followed by a number. All the people in the group would then put up 0, 1, or 2 thumbs up and if the whole groups thumbs count to the number the person said, the person who said that number puts a hand behind their back. The person with no hands remaining wins the game.
At the end of the day the OMU faculty provided a dinner for us and our buddies where we built stronger bonds with our new friends. I found the dinner fun because I got to learn more about Japan through the OMU buddies eyes. I feel that this trip will be very memorable for all on this study abroad program.
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