---
title: 'Dotonbori After Dark'
date: '2026-03-30 18:00'
template: entry
published: true
hero_image: ''
lat: '34.6687'
lng: '135.5017'
location_city: 'Osaka'
location_country: 'Japan'
weather_temp_c: 19
weather_desc: 'Cloudy'
---

Osaka is louder than Kyoto and prouder of it. Kyoto has temples and restraint. Osaka has neon and takoyaki and a sign the size of a building advertising a restaurant with a mechanical crab on the front. Both are correct.

I arrived from Kyoto mid-afternoon, dropped my bag, and went directly to Dotonbori to get my bearings before the evening crowd descended. The canal runs through the entertainment district, and on both sides there are restaurants stacked six floors high with illuminated signs competing for your attention so aggressively that after ten minutes you start to tune out the sensory overload and just walk.

At six in the evening the neon started properly. The famous running man billboard. The Glico sign. Streets full of people eating while walking — takoyaki (octopus balls, better than they sound), skewered meats, cones of spicy shrimp. Osaka has a word for its own food philosophy: *kuidaore*, which means "eat until you drop."

I took it as guidance.

Three hours of eating across four separate establishments. Kushikatsu — battered and deep-fried everything — at a counter in an alley so narrow that diners on opposite sides can shake hands across the table. Soft-serve matcha ice cream on the street. Okonomiyaki from a woman who pressed the pancake flat with a heavy iron tool and would not let me touch anything.

The canal was dark and the lights were reflected in it and for a while I just stood on the bridge watching people eat.
