Friday, April 11th
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We headed off to Osaka early in the morning. First stop was Osaka castle. In front of the castle was a guy selling drawings of the castle, sakura, etc. I was gonna buy one of them since they looked really cool and were fairly cheap, but decided to wait till after i got out of the castle. Unfortunately, the dude had left by the time we got back out. >_< Oh well. The weather for the day was definitely looking very iffy, so we headed toward the castle and hoped our luck would hold out. Osaka castle is COMPLETELY different than Himeji castle. While Himeji is an old castle with the "original" wood interior and had a very "old" feel to it, Osaka castle was a modern museum. While the outside was constructed to look like the original castle, the inside was a modern museum. Every floor in the castle had different displays regarding the history of the castle. The displays which were like little dioramas with video characters were very neat to see. Course, it might've made more sense if I could've understood everything they were saying. ^_^. It told the entire history of the castle, the ruling families, etc. There was also a very good view from the top (of course). You could see the entire city. (Of course one cityscape starts looking like another cityscape after a while ne? ^_^). After Osaka castle, the plan was just to check out the rest of the city. There were a couple of places in Ted's book that he wanted to check out. (DenDen town, a miniature Akihabara, America Town, and some all organic restaurant). So, we started heading towards the station near the castle. On the way to the station, we passed by Osaka-jo hall (concert hall/arena). As we were passing the hall, I saw a poster of something that caught my eye.... Morning Musume!! Out of curiosity, I stoppped to check out what it said. Upon further inspection... What? Morning Musume in concert tomorrow and Sunday?!?!? Darn, it's too bad I'm going to be heading to Hiroshima... but.... Needless to say, the wheels in my head started spinning. I REALLY wanted to go to this concert, but I didn't know how to go about it. Last thing I wanted to do was spend all the time getting back here only to not be able to find tickets. I finally decided that if I could manage to find tickets before we left Osaka that day, then I'd go to the concert. Otherwise, I'd just go to the Glay concert I had originally planned on going to. So, we headed off to DenDen town. I originally didn't have any expectations about this, but it actually turned out to be a lot better than I had expected. I was able to find a few used CD/DVD shops and such and bought a few different things. That was a pleasant surprise. After wandering around Denden town for a couple hours, we headed off to the Namba shopping district (this is kinda the main shopping area in Osaka). When we got there, the first thing I happen to spot was a ticket stall (kind of like 1st Row Tickets here in Dallas). And they had Morning Musume tickets!! LUCKY!! I guess that made my decision really easy... or should i say... holy sh$t!! I got tickets to a MM concert! whoo hoo!! (Dropped a pretty penny on the ticket, but who cares ne? ^_^) We finished looking around the Namba area and Osaka in general and then started heading back to Kobe. Tonight it's off to bed early, because tomorrow's gonna be a LONG day.