Dive deep into not one, but two of Osaka's most dynamic and delicious foodie neighborhoods on our small group (six guests or less), guided nighttime odyssey of fun. Come experience an Osaka night tour with a difference. With generous helpings of humor, culturally rich entertainment and tasty food spread across three different restaurants, this 3-ish-hour fully inclusive adventure is sure to leave you with a full stomach and a smiling face.

It’s important for you to know that our tour is not a pure food tour. Instead, you’ll spend the first 45 minutes or so exploring what makes the Tenma neighborhood so special. We then hit restaurant one, stroll a bit more, go to restaurant two, catch the train (fare included in your tour price) to Kyobashi and get, well, even deeper. Other tours have come along and copied our Tenma experience, but none seem to venture to Kyobashi as well. Such a pity.

Touting Osaka culture is kind of a thing for us, but we’re no slouches when it comes to food. In fact, we’re kind of sick in the head about it. Over the three carefully chosen restaurants we visit you’ll have the chance to try, on average fifteen different foods. Most of our guests have not tried or even seen half of them. But that doesn’t mean our Osaka night tour foists scary slimy things on you for the entertainment of it all, because we don’t. Incidentally, you should please enjoy takoyaki on your own. We’ve got bigger fish to fry with you.

Why choose us? Well, fluency for one. We’re all Japanese speakers but also native or near-native English speakers too, and we LOVE Osaka. Our company’s based here after all! You’ll know it’s The Real Thing as you carouse the neighborhoods and see the locals not only interacting with the guide, but quite probably with you too. Our mission is to have you to be local for a night. Come with us and break away from it all.

An Osaka night tour that’s not just about food, but is still quite about food:
We will meet at McDonald's. Yeah, we know it sounds dreary, but fear not: We quickly depart from this easily recognizable landmark and launch directly into our 45-minute cultural introduction to the Tenma district. The area was built so long ago that many of the streets weren’t even built wide enough for bicycle traffic, which makes sense since they hadn’t been invented. Our path then takes us on to one of the most significant covered arcades (shopping streets) in Osaka, Tenjinbashi-suji. Oodles of history, complete with a tie-in to Kyoto, and a still bustling, colorful sight even today. You should know that there’s a lot of colors to be had over the course of the evening, in all senses.

We’ve got a few stops lined up before we get to our first restaurant. Some are food-related, and some less so. We hate to ruin all the fun by dissecting the adventure here but trust us when we say, it’s a good time for all, and the leisurely walk gently works up the appetite too. All the curiosities together represent modern city life in Japan and as is the case with the rest of the evening, we see few other foreign visitors in the places we tread.

And now for the food:
Over the course of the night there will be about one and a half hours of walking around and exploring, also about one and a half hours of eating. It's a nice balance, if we do say so ourselves! Depending on the evening, all or some of the restaurants may be “tachinomi”, or local “standing bar” restaurants, – social lively places that have super tasty homemade food in addition to a bountiful drink selection. These are not bars in the drinking sense, but rather more akin to a place for tapas. Traditionally, these have been neighborhood stops where people go after work for their happy hour. Like most other customers, we only spend around 30 minutes in each one, as we want to keep the scenery and flavors fresh for you over the course of the evening.

A note about the food on our tour: We absolutely never serve endangered species (we are very serious about this), no raw chicken and there is no cat or dog meat either (Japanese don’t eat cats or dogs anyway). If you are a vegetarian, vegan, or have another dietary restriction (or even simply an arbitrary dislike), optimally you should just let us know in advance and we’ll make thoughtful arrangements.

When it comes to nightlife in Osaka, first and foremost on most visitor’s agenda is Dotonbori. Now, if you know what you are doing, there is some cool stuff to see there, but it is not particularly local anymore. At least not the parts that are generally accessible to foreigners (a curmudgeonly lot, that area’s owners can be!). Think of Dotonbori as a mini NY Times Square type spectacle. There’s even a Taco Bell. This is why we choose to show you Tenma and Kyobashi on our Osaka night tour, where there’s no pandering to tourist money. We were one of the original tour providers in the Tenma area. A few of us lived or still live in Tenma or nearby, and we knew the shop owners and scene well before we even started showing people around. Today, we are excited to continue offering an experience with no cut-corners, and no lesser food stops. We hope to see you soon!