So this past Thursday, I had a meet-up with my Japanese partner in crime Aki~ Our schedules rarely coincide, so our hangouts are pretty far between, but she's still one of my closest and best friends I've made since I moved to Japan.

Anyway, she was heading out to a Simple Plan show in Osaka, and invited me along, and I, never turning down an opportunity to listen to live music, eagerly agreed.

I feel bad for consciously neglecting to tell Shota until the last minute but I really just wanted it to be a ladies day/night type of thing, which Shota absolutely doesn't understand. He put up a little fight, but in the end agreed to remain at home. He still took my outfit photo for me though, for which I was grateful :) (he got his man-night this Saturday though, so we're even :P)


Since I knew we were probably going to end up walking a lot and jumping around, I opted out of any kind of elevated shoe and put on my trusty Dr. Martens. They also wear drink stains and foot prints so well..! :D

I kept it cute with the big, plastic bow. And surprisingly, most of all to me, I received a lot of compliments while we were out. That definitely helped reaffirmed my decision to stick with my street fashion roots :3 (though I still long to be tiny and cute like all the other tiny gurls here~~ lol). A lot of people form the shops like the black Micky and Minnie sweatshirt Lol






We started our day at March Masala, gorging on curry and nan until we felt like we would pass out.

I feel like the guys who run this place will eventually get sick of seeing my face and will one day just turn me away, but until that day.. more for meeee :)

←Aki messing around with my glasses~~ She's totally obsessed with union jack and skull items. She was also my partner in crime when JSG was still around. We both don't know what to do now that it's gone D:


Another awesome thing about Aki, she's as obsessed with karaoke as I am :DDD So after lunch and a little shopping, we tried out the newest karaoke place in Namba, カラオケ館 'karaoke kan' (karaoke building/hall/house. nice and straight to the point ;D).

This is my new number one for karaoke..!! No only is it brand new and completely lacking in the old man smell so rampant in most other karaoke dens, they got crazy-awesome stage lights and a laser box. LASER BOX. And the lights all coordinate with the music and singing. I think Karaoke Rainbow near Dotonbori is supposed to have the same thing, but it didn't work D:

This place was top notch. And relatively cheap at 80yen for 30 minutes, but you have to order an overpriced drink too. But even then, for our hour it was only 1080yen for both of us. Yeah, the drinks are really overpriced. I'm definitely going to try freetime next time I go..!!
The show was at Namba Hatch (excuse the God awful design of that site, the venue is really nice..!), which is located on the other side of the JR Namba station, away from the main streets. You can actually see it from the bridge near Dotonbori street (the opposite of Glico Man), but I thought it was some ice cream cone-shaped stadium. It's actually a radion station and concert venue, which admittedly makes more sense :x

Anyway, this pyramid isn't Namba Hatch. We just thought it looked nice and snapped photos of it. I didn't take any photos of Namba Hatch..!! 'Cuz I'm a dunce~ :/
I didn't bring my camera into the show either DD: But Aki said they weren't allowed, and I was NOT getting my brand new camera taken away. I should've used my smartphone, but of course that bright idea came along after I had already stuffed my things into a locker. Genius.

So I just snapped this photo while we were leaving. See how happy the people were?? It was a pretty good show, for a band I don't listen to. The three glasses of bourbon helped too (but they didn't have any else worth drinking D:). I sang the three songs I remembered from my angsty high school days, and just jumped around to the rest. They also broke out Black Eyed Peas and LMFAO covers in an effort to get the crowd dancing. HAHA that didn't work. The Japanese don't dance. But I did..!!
The band told the crowd, in English, that they were heading over to RockRock after the show for drinking and just hanging. I passed the info on to Aki, who didn't seem to have caught it even though her English level is pretty high. So I told her if she didn't catch it, most of the crowd probably missed it too, so we should head there if she wanted her photo opp. Aki, always eager for a photo opp and bar trips, eagerly agreed.

So we carried out tipsy behinds down the street to Ame-mura and RockRock :)

We had to pay a cover charge of 1000yen, but we did get a drink ticket, so it wasn't so bad a deal. I don't remember what I ordered.. maybe something with gin, while Aki went with a Tequila Sunrise (she ALWAYS has one of those when we go drinking. Strong girl~~). It was already after 10pm when we'd arrived, and it was still pretty empty, but we ordered some french fries and decided to wait until 10:30 before heading home.
We ate our fries as slowly as humanly possibly, complaining about the fatness we were gaining in winter and planning future barbeques for warmer seasons, when both our drinks and fries ran out. I went back for a kaluha and milk, and we checked our watches. By now it was nearing 11pm, and Aki lives out in Nara. But I was sure the band was coming, so I told her to just crash at my place tonight, and if they didn't show, we could just go to karaoke (AGAIN), after the bar. She agreed (karaoke fiend), and was about to order her next drink when Simple Plan and 10 Second Epic (their opening act), walked in, followed by a meager, but boisterous crowd.
I've never seen Aki's face light up as much as it did af that moment. It was adorable..!! :3
So we lined up behind a couple others for some photos. All the members were really gracious about it, though it was obvious that they really wanted to just drink and hang out.
My favorite photo from Simple Plan was this one with the bassist. He was super friendly and approached us while we were just drinking off to the side, giving out kisses, hugs and compliments.

Us married women surely do appreciate the compliments when we can get them..!♥ (husbands really don't do it often enough D:)

Or Maybe he was just really drunk already?? The world may never know~~

We also chatted with a couple members from 10 Second Epic, and they were all just really cool people. This photo I snapped with the bassist (AGAIN. I think I see a trend), who is literally the chill-est band dude I've ever met~

It was a little after 12am, and a couple more drinks later, before we decided to make our exit.

And headed over to karaoke.

We go hard. All day. And night :D
But seriously, after all the excitement and drinking, we were not ready to go home. We had to just go scream it all out.

This time we went to 804 Karaoke, which you can find all along the Ebisubashi and Shinsaibashi shopping streets. They all look really nice on the outside, but the rooms are really dirty and the equipment kind of old and ...janky LOL




But we were too high off of life to care..!! We sang our little hearts out for 2 hours before finally catching a cab back home around 2am. We would've stayed all night if I didn't have to work 11 to 8 the next day DD:

SO!! Here's the break-down  (in yen) of what a night like this will cost you in Osaka. I think this is one of those really important things you should keep in mind, especially if you're trying to be financially responsible and all. And as much fun as it was, I could probably only do this once a month. At the most :/

Maybe some of the ballers out there are like "pfft, pocket change~~" but I think for average young person, buried in student loans, that's a lot of money to just fart around with in just ONE DAY. I just can't ball like that~~ Lol You do just have to let yourself go and have fun sometimes though :D

So I hope this was informative or even a little entertaining to read. I think going to concerts and bars like this are quite unique to Japan, or at the very least, different from D.C., where I did my party-ing. I hope you guys get to try it out sometime..! :)

★Peaces★