Osaka life

In Japan, they say Osaka is the home of comedy, and you see that in the streets. They are quicker to laugh than their Tokyo counterparts, and always ready with a trick or a joke. Even the language in Osaka differs from the rest of the country; slang is de rigeur, and even the pronunciation is more relaxed.

Obviously Osaka is a tourist hotspot, with art galleries and museums, the famous aquarium, the castle, Universal Studios, the Umeda Skywalk and the temples, but Osaka as a tourist attraction lost its appeal for me after the first action-packed weekend I spent haemorrhaging money there. I did it all and, aquarium aside, mostly wouldn’t bother doing it twice.

But I will never tire of Osaka as a playground for the young and wide-eyed.

Since that first weekend, in which I fell deeply in love with the city that never sleeps, I have spent countless more there, just absorbing the energy that is so uniquely Osaka. Saturdays are spent eating takoyaki from the street stands on Dotombori by the river, posing for Glico man photos with strangers, pouring hundred yen coins into the many arcades that litter the city, having dinner and drinks at a fifth floor izakaya in Namba, singing karaoke and dancing until dawn. On Sundays we wander Amemura to cure the resultant hangover, peruse the shops in the shotengai, sit by the canal and watch the teenagers watching us, and finish up with the best Mexican food south of Tokyo at El Pancho.

I don’t even really have to DO anything in Osaka. Just being is enough; walking the streets, watching the crowds, and breathing in the joyful air of a city so youthful and gloriously self-aware.

Life is good here, and the Osaka-jin know it. But lucky for us, they love to let us in on the joke.