I woke this morning to birds chirping and the sunrise peaking through the trees on the rice paper sliding doors. I slept in the tatimi mat room under Fergs beautiful painting of the Irish Famine Road. We had morning coffee and great a great chat. We took our time getting ready for the day. I am temple and shrines out so we decided to just experience the city and see what the day brought. Ferg showed me around the university (Kansai Gaidai) where he is a professor. Beautiful grounds and it was quiet as it was a testing day where I believe it was high school students writing entrance exams. We walked around the area a bit and down the big hill through a cemetery down to the train station. We took the train in to Osaka and began the day walking along the river. We visited a rose garden where they have roses for every year. Well almost all the years, we tried again Lavinia to find your rose to no avail!! My rose for 1973 is Alec's Red. We walked and walked an walked and found one his favorite little places for lunch and we had the best burrito!! Yes a burrito....it was great and not noodles! We walked through the different districts....the punk area where there were some great outfits....the mall girl kind of high fashion area....a few other areas and then the kitchen alley where I found some beautiful drinking glasses that I had to buy! The stores in this kitchen area were tricky to navigate as they area tight squeeze for the average person in Japan, now imagine me and a guy over 6 feet literally shuffling through holding our breath making sure we don't knock anything over!! We happened upon a great kind of fashion market at the Namba Hatch which is a concert hall that looks like a space ship has landed on the side of the river in the midst of Osaka! It was very neat to see the outfits. One of those great things that you just happen upon. There we many moments during the day when Ferg would say I think this is the way and laugh.....we figured it all out eventually! Well mostly I just followed and trusted he would figure it out! There are so many small roads that are filled with so many restaurants and stores and they all look the same to me so no chance of me figuring out where we were! I do not how far we walked but I am pretty was far. My feet were done! We headed back to the Osaka Station and got me set up with a train ticket to Tokyo for Sunday. We found a bookstore for Ferg as he needed a book for his Japanese language course. We returned to Hirakata and bought some sushi in the market then headed up to his apartment. Another early night as we were exhausted from our day and have an early wake up to start my very long trip home.