Osaka (大阪) is Japan's third-largest city and its loudest. Where Tokyo is buttoned up and Kyoto is refined, Osaka is blunt, funny, and hungry. It has a reputation across Japan for two things above all: the food, and a way of talking to strangers that other cities find startlingly direct.
The kitchen of the nation
Osaka grew rich as a merchant town. In the Edo period it was the country's rice market and trading hub, the place where prices were set, and it earned the nickname tenka no daidokoro, "the kitchen of the nation." That history still shows. The city's food is cheap, fast, and built for eating standing up: takoyaki, batter balls with a piece of octopus inside, and okonomiyaki, a savoury pancake cooked on a hot plate in front of you. Osaka has its own word for overdoing it, kuidaore, which means eating yourself into ruin, and the city says it with pride.
A different manner
Osaka speaks its own dialect, Kansai-ben, softer and warmer to the ear than standard Japanese, and shopkeepers still greet regulars with mōkarimakka, "making any money?" The city is also the home of Japanese stand-up comedy: manzai, a fast double-act between a straight man and a fool, was shaped here, and most famous Japanese comedians came up through Osaka stages. Visitors usually notice that people talk to them more, and that the escalators run the other way around, with everyone standing on the right instead of the left.
Words & idioms to take away
Idioms & proverbs to carry away
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食い倒れ (kuidaore): "eating yourself into ruin," Osaka's own boast about spending everything on good food.
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漫才 (manzai): the two-person comedy routine, one straight and one foolish, that Osaka made into a national art form.