Trip Overview Part 5 - Day 7 - Osaka

Friday, May 17th, found me on the road again.  Or, more accurately, on the Shinkansen again.  I caught the Hirari 631 heading west from Nagoya at about 8:15 that morning.  It was a beautiful day and while the scenery didn't include Mount Fuji, it was still nice to see some more rural areas than the usual urban sprawl.  

This photo was taken as we passed through Sekigahara which is in a valley that passes through the mountains and historically has been the main route between western and eastern Japan.  The Battle Of Sekigahara, which marked the start of the Tokugawa Shogunate (and was featured in James Clavell's novel "Shogun" and its various adaptations), happened near here.  Those are the Ibuki mountains in the background.

The Shinkansen route descends from Sekigahara, passes by Lake Biwa and runs into Kyoto.  I've never stopped there but I did take this picture as we passed by:

The train arrive at the Shin-Osaka station a little before 9:30 and I hopped on the subway to head to my hotel to drop off my bags.  I was staying at a Toyoko Inn just north of Umeda station - it was the same one that I had stayed at in 2019 so I was familiar with how to get there.  

My first stop after dropping off my luggage was Mint Umeda which is located in the Hankyu Sanbangai Mall just north of Umeda Station.  Since this was just a few blocks south of my hotel, I walked there.  On my way, I noticed the ferris wheel on top of the Hep Five shopping mall sticking out from behind some buildings:

I was happy to see that Mint Umeda still had an Ultraman store as a neighbor:

After leaving Mint Umeda, I got back on the subway to head to the Daimaru Shinsaibashi department store, home of Osaka's other Mint store - Mint Daimaru Shinsaibashi.  (I'd make fun of the unoriginal name but since my blog is called "Japanese Baseball Cards", I don't feel I have any room to talk.)  The store is located a few blocks north of Dotonbori canal and Namba Parks, the shopping mall built on the site of Osaka Stadium.  (Since I'd been to both places in 2019, I didn't see any reason to go back this trip.)

After a very short visit to that Mint store, I headed over to the Shinsaibashi PARCO mall just next door.  There's a Godzilla store there and I was looking for something to get my wife's 12 year old great-nephew who was a big kaiju fan.  I had visited a Godzilla store my first evening in Tokyo a week earlier but not seen anything that I thought he'd like (well, actually, I saw a lot of things that I thought he might like but most were WAY out of my price range).

The Godzilla store was on the sixth floor of the mall and it was kind of interesting that there were a number of other pop culture-ish stores there including a Lego store, a Ghibli store, stores for various manga/anime properties and yet another Ultraman store:

The Godzilla store seemed a little larger than the one I went to in Shinjuku.

I ended up buying my wife's great-nephew a t-shirt and a large postcard for the store.  I thought he might like the bag too:

I also ended up buying something for my granddaughter at the Ghibli store - 

I got her the Catbus bib and a Totoro rattle.

I grabbed some lunch at the food court in the basement of the mall before heading to my next destination - an antique toy store called Kinkies that was a little ways away from the heart of Osaka.  I'll write more about that store in another post but I had a great time there.

After leaving Kinkies, I headed back into Osaka proper to check into my hotel and relax before making my way to Osaka Dome for that night's Orix Buffaloes - Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles match up.

I had been somewhat stymied on my previous trip to the Dome - I had been under the impression there was some sort of Orix baseball museum there but I had been unable to locate it.  But last year Deanna went to a game there and tweeted out some photos of old Hankyu Braves stuff so I made sure I got information from her on where to go.  It's on the lower level of the park and you actually don't need a ticket to get to it.  It's the same level that the team's main store is on.  It's not a "museum" as such but there's a couple of spots that have old Hankyu and Kobe-era Orix stuff as well.

Some of the stuff is in the area where the fan club members line up to get stuff so I needed to explain that I just wanted to get photos of the pennants.

I'm curious - Orix/Hankyu has won five Nippon Series titles - 1975, 1976, 1977, 1996 and 2022.  Three of those championship pennants are here (1977, 1996 and 2002).  The 1975 pennant is over in the Hankyu Nishinomiya Gallery in Nishinomiya Gardens, the mall built on the site of Nishinomiya Stadium.  So where's the 1976 one?

There was a display for Yoshinobu Yamamoto:

And a display for the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes - I have no idea why several of the bobbleheads are laying on their sides:

I once again had pretty good seats for the ballgame.  Tonight's pitching matchup was Takahisa Hayakawa for the Eagles against Daiki Tajima for the Buffaloes.  It was a pretty good game.  The Eagles took a 1-0 lead in the second inning and extended it to 2-0 in the top of the fifth before Orix scored once in the bottom of the inning.  The Eagles got another single run in the top of the eighth, knocking Tajima out of the game but Orix scored two in the bottom of the inning to tie it up 3-3 and chase Hayakawa.  The score didn't remain tied for long though - Rakuten plated two in the top of the ninth and Takahiro Norimoto shut down Orix by striking out two of the three batters he faced in the bottom of the ninth to notch his ninth save of the season in the Eagles 5-3 win.  Here are the game highlights from Pacific League TV:

If it seems like I've seen the Eagles a lot on this trip, it's only because I had.  This was the third time I had seen them in the week I'd been in Japan - I'd seen them lose to the Lions the previous Saturday and beat the Hawks in Sendai three days earlier.  I'd see them one more time on the trip, in a somewhat memorable game.  But that's for a future post.

Following the game, I headed back to my hotel to crash and rest up for Saturday's adventure - I would be spending most of the day at Koshien Stadium.  But that's also for a future post.