Regional Dialects -- a guide to Kyoto/Osaka-ben

I was slowly learning the Japanese language and hit a stumbling block when many of my contacts in Japan weren't speaking the language the way I was taught. How could this be? Simply put, many of my friends were in Osaka, or the southern region of Japan, which includes the old capitol city of Kyoto.

I'm hoping people will share their stories here, along with some online guides, useful books, good teaching tools and videos with other members to increase everyone's knowledge of this rich language and beautiful regional dialect.

Thanks in advance and I apologize for any beginners mistakes!

Here are the links for two online resources for beginners to study for learning Osaka-ben.

The first link has many interesting examples in the regional pronunciation, and can be quite useful for general education.
Dialects:　　 Kansai/Oosaka dialect - kansaiben wordlist

The second link is a guide to useful (????) words and phrases -- though some of these sound like things a punk or gangster would say! It's really fun to practice these expressions, even though I would never use some of them in real life.
Learn Kansai-ben/Osaka-ben

I hope this is useful for people!