Made it to Tokushima, in the middle of nowhere! Couldn’t find the train from Shin Osaka to Osaka. Turns out it’s the Kobe line. Also managed to guess and get on the right bus to Tokushima with a non-English speaking clerk. She did understand how to say “one way or round trip”, however! I love how the shinkansen staff bow at the end of each train car before moving on. I finally used my $2.29 per minute roaming cell phone to arrange our pickup in Tokushima. We mete Pete at the train station and went to his apartment via taxi. The apartment is pretty nice and was apparently provided by the JET program. His 27 inch iMac and iPhone 4 stand as monuments to Steve Jobs right in his living room. His chair, however, was yellow and covered in butt sweat, which became a meme for the rest of the trip. Pete told us about his life in Japan and how he plans to head back to the States after another JET year. He also says that he’s been on a few group dates but that it’s hard to find anyone looking for a serious relationship and not “woo, I had a fling with a foreigner!”. The first night we just ended up heading out to McDonald’s and getting some crazy burgers. We met some of Pete’s English students there and have throughout town, as apparently his English teaching job entails knowing basically every student at his school. The students apparently hang out at McDonald’s as if it were a Starbucks, but have to go to juku (cram school) at like 9 at night, which is ridiculous. Everyone is so polite it is amazing! Pete doesn’t have a car so we’ve been riding bikes around. Thank goodness I ride bikes nearly every day back home! The bikes here are pretty nice with built in lights powered by your riding and built in wheel locks and double sided kickstands as well as integrated chain guards. There are a ton of folding bikes as well, which makes sense with the small quarters many people have around here. Just like in the stereotype, there are also random vending machines in the middle of residential streets, but they usually sell drinks and not other weird stuff.