April 30, 2005

April 30th.
Early this morning I visited Tokyu Hands, an 8 floor version of Michaels or Hobby Lobby. In addition to craft and art supplies and decorative items they had accessories, and all kinds of do it yourself supplies. I spent my entire two hours on the top two floors: stationary, office supplies, scrapbooking and paper. We met David for lunch at the Namba Parks mall. An unusual mutilevel shopping mall with little outdoor parks on each level.
In the afternoon we all went to the Osaka history museum where some friendly volunteer docents helped me to dress up in the costume of the Imperial Fan Bearer. It is a wonderful museum, most of the captions were in Japanese with only a few English words thrown in now and then. From the windows we could see Osaka Castle below. Later we walked around the castle grounds in the cool of the evening.
I carried a small blank book with me to get it stamped wherever we went, attractions, train stations etc. In the history museum I got my book stamped at several different stations as we moved through.