Osaka is a city you eat your way across. Start at the canal.
Which Dotonbori food walk really stops at five counters. What the castle tower costs on the door. Reviews of every tour you can book in Osaka.
Four Osaka days that decide the rest of the trip.
A food walk after dark, the castle before the coaches, an hour on tatami, and a lap of Namba in a go-kart.
01The eating nightOsaka Food Tour: 13 Dishes at 5 Local EateriesThirteen dishes across five counters, ordered for you in Japanese. Turn up hungry and leave the restaurant plan at the hotel.
02The early morningOsaka Castle Walking Tour and Castle Tower AdmissionTower admission with a guide who walks you round the moat first. The stone walls and the plum grove are free; the view from the top is not.
03The quiet hourTea Ceremony ExperienceA tea room, a whisk and somebody who has done this for thirty years. The one hour of the trip nobody is shouting through.
04The silly oneOsaka Go Karting Tour with Funny CostumeA road-legal kart, a costume off the rack and a lap past the Glico sign. Bring the paper permit or you are watching from the pavement.
Osaka is a handful of neighbourhoods and one very loud canal.
The water that never turns its signs off, a castle with a plum grove, the retro tower district, the covered market where the tasting is done standing up, and an observatory slung between two towers.
Osaka has called itself the nation’s kitchen since the rice barges. Book accordingly.
Three ways to eat this city. Somebody walks you between counters and orders for you, somebody teaches you to make the thing yourself, or you graze a covered market at your own speed. What it costs to join each.
The Osaka days out everybody books before they land.
Every Osaka review →Karting past the Glico sign, thirteen dishes in Shinsekai, a tea room off Doutonbori. These carry more travellers than anything else in the city.
1
Osaka Go Karting Tour with Funny Costume
Spend about an hour driving a one-person go-kart through Osaka with a guide, costume, fuel, and insurance included. The route can include Namba, Dotonbori, Tsutenkaku, Kitashinchi, and the American Quarter. Guides such as Yuma, Nas, Lawrence, and Hang have helped make the ride safe and fun.
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
Kyoto, Nara, Himeji, Hiroshima: Osaka is the station they all leave from.
Osaka is the cheaper bed and the better-connected station, which is why so many people sleep here and spend the day somewhere older. Deer and a giant Buddha in Nara, the temple run in Kyoto, a white castle in Himeji, a bay full of boathouses on the far coast.
What a day out in Osaka actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what you pay. A tower ticket and a cruise under the bridges together still come in under one guided dinner.
Observatory tickets, the twenty-minute canal cruise, castle admission and the shorter market walks.
- 1Osaka Castle: Museum and Tower Entry Ticketfrom $7
- 2Tea Ceremony Experiencefrom $25
- 3Umeda Sky Building Official E-Ticketfrom $12
The standards: evening food walks, cooking classes, tea ceremonies, karting and the Nara day out.
Private guides, the Hiroshima run with a reserved shinkansen seat, and the long chauffeured days.
Osaka does not dim at night. It moves indoors and gets louder.
The canal signs come on at dusk and the Uranamba lanes fill up behind them. Bar crawls that get you through doors with no English menu, a twenty-minute cruise under the bridges, and a taiko show that finishes early enough to eat afterwards.
Every Osaka night out →
Three things this city does that nowhere else bothers with.
A luck god with worn-smooth feet, a public road you drive in fancy dress, and a mountain temple disappearing under thousands of daruma.
Billiken and the Tsutenkaku
Shinsekai was built in 1912 as Osaka’s version of the future, half Paris and half Coney Island, and it has been cheerfully out of date ever since. Billiken sits at the foot of the Tsutenkaku tower with the soles of his feet rubbed smooth by people asking for luck. The kushikatsu counters underneath run on one rule, and it is about the shared sauce pot: you dip a skewer once.
- 1Shinsekai Food Tour with 13-15 Dishes at 5 Eateries★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 2,204 reviews
- 2Osaka Local Foodie Walking Tour in Dotonbori and Shinsekai★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 985 reviews
- 3Tsutenkaku Tower Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 3.8 · 125 reviews
Karting the public roads
These are road-legal karts in real traffic, driven in whatever costume the shop has left on the rack, along the canal and past the Glico sign. You need a full driving licence and an International Driving Permit, issued in your own country before you fly, and no shop in the city will bend on that. Osaka runs the busiest circuits of it in Japan.
- 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
The daruma hillside at Katsuo-ji
The city stops at Minoh and a wooded gorge starts. Katsuo-ji fills every ledge, wall and step with daruma dolls left by people whose wish came good, so the hillside is red with them. The walk up the valley to the waterfall ends at stalls selling maple leaves battered and deep-fried, which is exactly as strange and as good as it sounds.
- 1Minoh, Katsuoji Temple, & Minoh Falls Full-day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 172 reviews
- 2Katsuo-ji Temple, Arashiyama Forest, & Nara Park★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 37 reviews
- 3Minoh Waterfall and nature walk through the Minoh Park★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 29 reviews
Four Osaka bookings that will not wait for you to land.
Most of this city can be arranged over breakfast on the day. These four run on a document, a seat number or a room that holds a few dozen people.
- 01Osaka Go Karting Tour with Funny CostumeYou need a full driving licence and an International Driving Permit. The permit is only issued in your own country, before you travel.
- 02Sumo Show & Experience w/ Optional Kimono & Hot PotThe shows run to a fixed calendar in rooms that seat a few dozen people. The good dates go weeks out.
- 03Hiroshima Miyajima Bus Tour & Shinkansen TicketThe day is built on a reserved shinkansen seat and the last ferry back off Miyajima. Neither waits for you.
- 04Tea Ceremony ExperienceA tea room takes four or five guests at a sitting, and the host has to prepare for them. Same-day is rarely a thing.
Osaka in June and August: get under a roof.
The rainy season lands in June and the humidity holds until late September, so the middle of the day is the problem and the answer is always indoors. A kitchen, a tea room, a tatami floor or hot water. Shinsaibashi-suji runs covered for most of a kilometre if you would rather shop through it.
By district, and by where the train takes you
By kind of day: kitchen, counter, temple or kart
Castle, canal, deer, temples: the week most people build out of Osaka.
HimejiThe newest Osaka tour reviews.
More of the newest Osaka reviews →
Osaka Street Food Festival :Takoyaki＆Okonomiyaki for Families
Read our review →
Japanese Zen Massage and Facial at the Temple/180-min
Read our review →
Osaka Unveiled Private Tour: Bustling Streets to Serene Shrines
Read our review →
Osaka Castle and Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine Private Half-Day Tour
Read our review →
Nara private tour (Shore excursion available from Osaka or Kobe port)
Read our review →
Private Vibrant Night Photoshoot Experience in Osaka (Dotonbori)
Read our review →
Osaka Soul : IZAKAYA Shinsekai to Dotonbori Food Paradise！
Read our review →
Half day Osaka Bay Area Cycling with E-Assist Bicycle Tour
Read our review →
Kobe private tour from Osaka (Shore excursion available from Osaka or Kobe port)
Read our review →
Make Sushi and Create Unforgettable Memories in Osaka
Read our review →
Osaka Ramen Cooking Class “Learn here and make it at home”
Read our review →