Osaka is a city you eat. Start on Dotonbori.
Which street-food walk really stops at five counters. What the castle ticket costs and whether the tower is worth the queue. Whether Kyoto is worth a whole day off Osaka. Reviews of every tour you can book in the city.
A food street, a castle keep, a kart, and one day in Kyoto.
The four bookings a first trip to Osaka tends to hang off. What each costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first eveningShinsekai Food Tour with 13-15 Dishes at 5 EateriesThirteen dishes over five counters in Shinsekai, the district everyone means when they say old Osaka.
02The castle morningOsaka Castle: Museum and Tower Entry TicketMuseum and tower entry on one ticket. Go at opening; the queue for the lift builds fast after ten.
03The one everybody talks aboutOsaka Go Karting Tour with Funny CostumeStreet-legal karts through Namba in costume. Bring the international permit; it cannot be issued once you land.
04The day off OsakaKyoto and Nara Day Trip from OsakaKyoto and Nara in one run, both close enough by train that you are back for dinner on the canal.
Street counter, cooking bench or standing bar. Pick how you eat Osaka.
This is the kitchen of Japan and it does not do subtle. Three ways to eat your way through it, what it costs to join each, and which part of the city it happens in.
The days out more people book than anything else in Osaka.
Every Osaka tour we have reviewed →Karts, food streets and the castle ticket. What earns each of them the slot, and what it costs.
1
Osaka Go Karting Tour with Funny Costume
Drive Osaka’s streets in costume on a small-group go-kart tour through Namba, Dotonbori, Tsutenkaku, and Kitashinchi.
From · $46
Read our review →
2
Osaka Castle: Museum and Tower Entry Ticket
from $7
3
Shinsekai Food Tour with 13-15 Dishes at 5 Eateries
from $53
4
Osaka Food Tour: 13 Dishes at 5 Local Eateries
from $73
5
Hungry Osaka Street Food Tour:15 Tastings & 3 Drinks with a Local
from $73
6
Tea Ceremony Experience
from $25
7
Osaka Kickstart: Hotspots & Hidden Gems Tour
from $31
8
Deep Backstreet Osaka Tours (Option to add Dinner)
from $53
Six districts, and the best thing to book in each.
A canal lined with signboards, a keep in a moat, a 1950s quarter under a steel tower, a covered market that opens at nine, an observation deck on the north side, and the old shrines the trains run past.
Osaka keeps a very old country ten minutes off the canal.
A tea room where the whisking takes longer than the drinking. A kendo hall that hands you a shinai. Sumo close enough to feel the floor. The city that invented instant noodles also runs some of the calmest hours in Japan.
Kyoto is fifteen minutes away. So is a plate of Kobe beef.
Osaka is the cheapest bed in Kansai and the best-connected station, which is why so many people sleep here and spend the day somewhere else. Kyoto, Nara, Kobe, Himeji, and the long run west to Hiroshima.
What a day out in Osaka actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A lot of the best hours here cost less than the beer that follows them.
Tower and deck tickets, river cruises, tea rooms, bar crawls and the shorter walking tours.
The full food walks, cooking benches, kart runs, sumo evenings and the Kyoto and Nara days.
Private guides, the bullet-train run to Hiroshima, Koyasan by car, and the long chauffeured days.
- 1Osaka/Kyoto: Hiroshima Miyajima Bus Tour & Shinkansen Ticketfrom $277
- 2Absolute Osaka Food Tourfrom $231
- 3Osaka Nighttime tourfrom $198
Osaka Castle: get in before ten, or look at it from the moat.
Everything at the castle →
The keep is a rebuild with a lift inside and a museum on eight floors, and the queue for that lift is the whole decision. These three cover the ticket, the walk around the outer walls, and the view back at it from the top of the city.
Museum and tower, or just the park
One ticket covers the museum floors and the observation deck at the top. Worth it on a clear morning; skippable if you only want the keep photographed from the far side of the inner moat.
Umeda Sky and the Tsutenkaku
The Floating Garden deck at Umeda is open to the sky and best an hour before sunset, when the whole basin lights up and the castle sits small and green in the middle of it.
Castle, canal and the streets between
The park, the outer walls, then down through Tenma and the covered arcades to the water. Osaka is flat and dense, which makes it one of the better Japanese cities to simply walk.
Dotonbori does not calm down. Book something that uses that.
The canal is loudest and best between eight and eleven, when the signboards are all lit and the boats keep running. Night food tours, a bar crawl through Namba, and a twenty-minute cruise under the bridges for the price of a coffee.
Every night out in Osaka →
Three things that only really happen in Osaka.
Grilled food and old temples exist all over Japan. A batter ball turned with a metal pick, a public road full of costumed karts, and a sumo ring you can sit two metres from do not.
Takoyaki and okonomiyaki
Both were invented here and both are cooked in front of you. Takoyaki is a wheat batter poured into a dimpled iron plate, dropped with octopus and turned with a metal pick until the ball closes on itself. Okonomiyaki is the cabbage pancake you finish yourself at the table. The classes run small, usually two hours, and you eat everything you make.
- 1Osaka Cooking Class: Okonomiyaki &Japanese cuisines experience★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 261 reviews
- 2Osaka Sake Tasting with Takoyaki Cooking★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 156 reviews
- 3Osaka Sake Tasting & Takoyaki Cooking Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 149 reviews
Karts on the public road
They are road-legal buggies and they run in traffic, past the Glico sign and out along the river, in costumes the shops hand out at the door. You need an International Driving Permit in your hand — Japan does not issue them and will not accept a home licence alone — so this is arranged before you fly, not on the day.
- 1Osaka Go Karting Tour with Funny Costume★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,658 reviews
- 2Official Street Go-Kart Tour – Osaka Shop★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 883 reviews
- 3Guided Go Karting Tour in a Funny Costume★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 247 reviews
Sumo at two metres
The grand tournament comes to Osaka for a fortnight in March. The rest of the year the shows are staged by retired wrestlers in small halls, which sounds like a compromise until you are sitting on the mat edge watching two men hit each other at close range, then eating the same chanko hotpot they train on.
- 1Sumo Show & Experience w/ Optional Kimono & Hot Pot★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 609 reviews
- 2Sumo Stage Show with Bento or Snack + Fight & Photo★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 364 reviews
- 3English Stand Up Comedy Show at Osaka Comedy Club★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 203 reviews
Tsuyu in June, and a August that sits at thirty-five degrees.
Osaka has two weather problems. The rainy season lands in June and stays for a month, and August is humid enough to end an outdoor plan by noon. The answer is the same for both: book the indoor hours and put the canal walk in the evening. Kitchens, tea rooms, hot springs, workshops and the decks that are glassed in.
Four Osaka bookings that will not wait for you to land.
Most of this city can be arranged the night before over a beer on the canal. These four run on paperwork, tiny rooms and calendars that take no interest in when your flight gets in.
- 01Osaka Go Karting Tour with Funny CostumeYou need an International Driving Permit in hand. Japan does not issue them, so it has to be arranged in your own country before you leave.
- 02Sumo Show & Experience w/ Optional Kimono & Hot PotThe halls are small and seat a few dozen people a sitting. When the March tournament is in town the staged shows go too.
- 03Tea Ceremony ExperienceA tea room takes about eight guests at a time and the sittings are an hour apart. There is no walk-up queue to join.
- 04Daytime Hanami (Cherry Blossom) and Food TourThe bloom lasts roughly a week and the date moves every year. These run inside that window and fill before it is announced.
Osaka is flat, dense and best understood at walking pace.
No hills, no real distance between the sights, and covered arcades that run for kilometres when the weather turns. A guide is worth it here less for the history than for the doors — the backstreet counters with no English menu and six seats.
- 1Deep Backstreet Osaka Tours (Option to add Dinner)from $53
- 2Osaka Local Foodie Walking Tour in Dotonbori and Shinsekaifrom $111
- 3Deep Backstreets Walking Tour with Dinner Optionfrom $40
By place — the districts and the day trips
By kind of day — counter, kitchen, hall or road
Dotonbori, the castle, the market, and two trains out of Kansai.
The newest Osaka tour reviews.
The rest of the new Osaka reviews →
Osaka Early Morning Osaka Castle Tour Avoid Crowds
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Shared Arrival Transfer: Osaka Itami Airport to Osaka City
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Kyoto Full day Tour Kinkakuji, Kiyomizu-dera and Fushimi Inari
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Kyoto Amanohashidate and Ine No Funaya Tour from Osaka
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Private Full-Day Guided Tour in the City of Kobe
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Full-Day Private Guided Tour of the Historical City
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Traditional Calligraphy Experience near Dotonbori
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