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a day in Osaka with no Koshien makes Deanna something something
It's midnight, I'm really tired. It's still raining in Osaka.
We had a pretty good day today despite Koshien raining out. V went back to his room to go to sleep and I came back here and did some photo cropping and whatnot, and around noon we finally set out from here for real.
First stop was the Osaka Dome. I wanted to get the third Yaji t-shirt, since I have the first two. Turns out they stopped making them and they had a few "clearance" ones for 1000 yen -- all in size Medium, which really does NOT work for me in Japanese size. SIGH. But, so, since we were there and all, we decided to eat lunch in one of the restaurants in the outfield -- an udon place -- and get this, the Hanshin Tigers had a team practice at the dome today! (Their opening game is there on Friday.) So we were basically eating lunch and watching the pitchers do tossing and do some fielding practice, and then for a while, Hiyama and Kanemoto and Sakurai and Fujikawa were taking outfield practice, catching flies and all, right near where we were. We even got to go out on the ledge and take a few photos. It was neat. V was like "OMG THIS IS SO COOL" the entire time, like we were basically getting to see a Tigers team practice that was not really open to the public.
We walked around the entire Dome but there wasn't that much open besides a few restaurants and the big shop, so we gave up on that and decided, of all places, to go to Osaka Castle. I hadn't been there in 4 years and I get my Japanese history confused, all of those Toyotomis and Tokugawas and so on, so thought I could use a refresher and it'd be something indoors we could do. So we did that. It was kinda cool, and we were surrounded by the Nichidai Meisei baseball team at one point, I guess they also had nothing better to do during the Koshien rainout.
Headed to Nanba after that. The first place we went was to the "famous Dotonbori spot" where the Hanshin Tigers fans used to jump into the river after games until they boarded up the street, and where the famous Colonel Sanders statue got submerged for looking like Randy Bass in 1985. Then we wandered around a bit; went into an arcade and played some Gashaaaaaan!! which is perfect for baseball types since we theoretically have decent aim, and when our arms got tired we looked for dinner, finally settling on an all-you-can-eat yakiniku place that a lady on the street gave us coupons for (she got bonus points for not treating me like a crazy white alien thing). It was actually fairly decent for 2200 yen and tabehodai, and we stuffed our faces for 2 hours and then got kicked out.
We'd been talking about a lot of the music that came on the radio on and off all evening there, so I suggested we should go to karaoke, so we did. I have a card for Karaoke-kan so we went there, and spent an hour and a half singing stuff, some baseball-related, some not. It was pretty fun except for the time when we accidentally picked Izayuke Wakataka Gundan Hawks 2007 disco remix instead of the real thing. Whoops. We also stumbled through stuff like Eikan wo Kimi ni Kagayaku, the summer Koshien theme song. Good times.
Came back here around 11:30 I guess. It's still raining. Going to get up at 6:30 as if we're going to Koshien, but this time probably check the news before going downstairs so we know if Koshien is cancelled again. If it is, I'll probly pretty much just go back to Tokyo. Sigh.
We had a pretty good day today despite Koshien raining out. V went back to his room to go to sleep and I came back here and did some photo cropping and whatnot, and around noon we finally set out from here for real.
First stop was the Osaka Dome. I wanted to get the third Yaji t-shirt, since I have the first two. Turns out they stopped making them and they had a few "clearance" ones for 1000 yen -- all in size Medium, which really does NOT work for me in Japanese size. SIGH. But, so, since we were there and all, we decided to eat lunch in one of the restaurants in the outfield -- an udon place -- and get this, the Hanshin Tigers had a team practice at the dome today! (Their opening game is there on Friday.) So we were basically eating lunch and watching the pitchers do tossing and do some fielding practice, and then for a while, Hiyama and Kanemoto and Sakurai and Fujikawa were taking outfield practice, catching flies and all, right near where we were. We even got to go out on the ledge and take a few photos. It was neat. V was like "OMG THIS IS SO COOL" the entire time, like we were basically getting to see a Tigers team practice that was not really open to the public.
We walked around the entire Dome but there wasn't that much open besides a few restaurants and the big shop, so we gave up on that and decided, of all places, to go to Osaka Castle. I hadn't been there in 4 years and I get my Japanese history confused, all of those Toyotomis and Tokugawas and so on, so thought I could use a refresher and it'd be something indoors we could do. So we did that. It was kinda cool, and we were surrounded by the Nichidai Meisei baseball team at one point, I guess they also had nothing better to do during the Koshien rainout.
Headed to Nanba after that. The first place we went was to the "famous Dotonbori spot" where the Hanshin Tigers fans used to jump into the river after games until they boarded up the street, and where the famous Colonel Sanders statue got submerged for looking like Randy Bass in 1985. Then we wandered around a bit; went into an arcade and played some Gashaaaaaan!! which is perfect for baseball types since we theoretically have decent aim, and when our arms got tired we looked for dinner, finally settling on an all-you-can-eat yakiniku place that a lady on the street gave us coupons for (she got bonus points for not treating me like a crazy white alien thing). It was actually fairly decent for 2200 yen and tabehodai, and we stuffed our faces for 2 hours and then got kicked out.
We'd been talking about a lot of the music that came on the radio on and off all evening there, so I suggested we should go to karaoke, so we did. I have a card for Karaoke-kan so we went there, and spent an hour and a half singing stuff, some baseball-related, some not. It was pretty fun except for the time when we accidentally picked Izayuke Wakataka Gundan Hawks 2007 disco remix instead of the real thing. Whoops. We also stumbled through stuff like Eikan wo Kimi ni Kagayaku, the summer Koshien theme song. Good times.
Came back here around 11:30 I guess. It's still raining. Going to get up at 6:30 as if we're going to Koshien, but this time probably check the news before going downstairs so we know if Koshien is cancelled again. If it is, I'll probly pretty much just go back to Tokyo. Sigh.