OEH is located in Hirakata which is halfway between Kyoto and Osaka and Nara and Kobe so it's a great place to stay if you need a good hub for traveling around Kansai. However, the location is a bit annoying if you mainly work/play in just one of the cities as you'll be faced with a 45+ minute trip every time you head out or come back...and the last train back from Kyoto is really early. Keihan runs highway buses directly from Hirakata so it's easy to catch a bus to Tokyo, Nagoya, Hiroshima, etc. The station is only about a 10 minute walk but the house is located on a very steep hill. Hirakata is a pretty nice city, it has great parks, restaurants, a theme park, even a little dance club by the university. The rooms are very small but comfortable. The rent is a bit high; you can definitely find larger rooms for cheaper in the Osaka/Kyoto area but you won't get the same kind of experience if you stay at a normal gaijin or share house. There are about 12-15 Japanese college students living at the house which makes it a good place to live if you want to work on your Japanese...kind of. Even though the place is called Osaka English House and the Japanese students attend a foreign language university, they aren't necessarily especially interested in gaijin or English. Keep in mind that most of the students have been living at the house for years and have seen numerous gaijin come and go. It'll take some time and a bit of work on your part to get friendly with them...if you're only at the house for a week or two, plan on spending your time with the other gaijin in the house. The shared facilities in the house are pretty nice and well equipped. However, the dirtiness of the kitchen is a perpetual nuisance as people just don't clean up after themselves...Japanese college kids don't seem to be much different from their Western counterparts in that respect. It gets pretty bad over the weekends when the staff isn't in to clean...I wouldn't even walk in there on a Sunday evening much less try to cook anything. Overall, it's a nice place but if you go in thinking that it's going to be similar to staying with a host family because of the Japanese residents, you'll be very disappointed with the experience.