You know it's going to be warm and muggy day when you can feel it as soon as you wake up! That's what we felt Tuesday morning.

This morning's destination was Osaka Castle Park. The castle grounds cover a 261 acre area in central Osaka. It's construction started in 1583, completed in 1598, reduced to ashes in wars in 1614 & 1615 then rebuilt between 1620 - 1629. Additional reconstructions were done in 1931 and 1997. Miraculously it survived the city wide air raids during the war. It is said over 500,000 (some incredibly large) stones were used in the reconstructed walls. It's now a beautiful 8 story castle built high on a hill surrounded by a double moat with many vantage points to see and defend against any enemies coming to attack. On this very warm day, it was nice walk up as the path was lined with water misters .

There is an observation area on the top floor of the castle tower looking out over Osaka on all four sides. Inside the castle, the history of the castle and battles are on display through various artifacts, displays, videos and models. In the Osaka Castle Park there are several historic structures such as Osaka-jo Hall and the Castle band shell as well as Japanese archery grounds and baseball stadium. The gardens have 600 Cherry trees, peach and plum orchard as well as a wide assortments of trees and seasonal flowers.

We checked out the entire castle as well as most of the grounds, then stopped for Green tea ice cream in a waffle cone before carrying on.

Our destination goal today was to get to a baseball game at the Osaka-Kyoto Buffaloes' home field, the Kyocera Dome Osaka.(Are there really buffaloes in Japan)? Tonight and tomorrow night, the Buffaloes are hosting the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks(Haruna's Dad, Yasutoshi's favourite team). As we weren't sure about getting ticket sales (we couldn't find ticket office hours anywhere so we arrived at about 2:30 pm for the 6 pm game start - it seemed that was a good idea as the ticket office opened up at 3:30, we discovered. We were surprised to find a lot of people already buzzing around the stadium entrances and a bunch of people already lining up for the 4 pm gate opening when we arrived.

We didn't think anything of only a few people waiting to buy tickets until we got up to the window and were told we were at the general admission ticket (rush seating) gate and ticket counter....we needed to go to the ticket counter at the next gate for the designated seating, where, of course, there was a MUCH bigger line of people waiting to buy tickets. The line moved steadily, we got our tickets and though it was only about 3:45, considering the growing line to get in, we got in line too.

The Kycera Dome has a capacity of 36,477people and tonight it looked about half full. Due to the look of the dome, it was a bit like being inside of a UFO!

Security checks all the bags upon entry (and everyone in this country seems to carry at least one bag), but if there are drinks, security doesn't take them away. Instead they put the drinks into cups for the fans but take the bottles and cans. As well, the stadium didn't like it, but they didn't prohibit fans from bringing outside food in either.

Fans of each team have organised chants, cheers & cheer songs(some with actions) & cheer the entire game when their team is at bat. Its all quite orderly! At this game, both sides brought their horn sections, drummers and flag wavers. Tonight the opposition Fukuoka Softbank Hawks seemed to have a bigger fan presence than the home team as it was predominately yellow jerseys on their side of the field. We found this interesting as the Southbank Hawks fans also seemed to be sporting team jerseys in green, blue, black, and pink. Most of the Southbank Hawks' fans also came armed with mini twin bats(of various designs), which doubled as cheering & rhythm sticks - they all seemed familiar with all the cheer songs, to know when to use the sticks.  

We marveled at the amount of beer gals in the stands selling for Asahi, Kirin & Suntory beer brands. Interesting as the girls were not selling cans, they were selling draft - each wearing a small keg on their backs. They were also dressed in bright colours of their company. About $6.50 Canadian for a beer in the stands. We also checked out some stadium food - we had shrimp, squid and scallops on a stick, as well as our first Mosburger burgers.

Other stuff we found interesting at tonight's game:
* for pregame batting practice there was a large net cage & fences around the batter and a safety net in front of the pitcher.
* Osaka Buffaloes had 2 non-Japanese players playing tonight:
++Brandon Dickson, the starting (and winning) pitcher who pitched the first 6 innings - there was a different pitcher for each of the subsequent 3 innings.
++ Tony Blanco, the designated hitter who hit the only home run
* Osaka Buffaloes have an 18 member girls dance team which performed 3 or 4 times over the course of the game.
* 4 umpires officiated the game.
* Bullpens were in front of each dug out. Practice pitches were thrown between the active pitches of the game.
* there was a choreographed balloon release (after some sort of cheers song) by the opposing team at the end of the 6th inning, which was answered between the top and bottom of the 7th inning by a cheer song & balloon release by the home team .
* Everyone picked up their own garbage - an amazing site at each garbage dump on the concourse on the way out!!
**Final score of the game - Fukuoka Southbank Hawks 1 (off 11 hits) and Osaka Buffaloes 6 (off 12 hits). This win marked the 5,000 club win for the Osaka Buffaloes!
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Subway mural, on our way back to the hotel from the game(another long day).