Tsutenkaku

Tsutenkaku is 103 metres tall. That is shorter than a good many office buildings in Umeda, and considerably shorter than the Umeda Sky Building. Nobody comes here for altitude, and anyone told this is Osaka’s great view will be puzzled at the top.

What it is instead is the emotional centre of south Osaka. The first tower on this spot went up in 1912, part-Eiffel and part-Arc de Triomphe by design, and was dismantled for its steel during the war. The present tower is a 1956 replacement, funded locally, and its neon has been the district’s clock ever since – the colours at the top used to give the next day’s weather forecast, which is the kind of civic detail Osaka takes seriously.

At the top sits Billiken, a squat grinning good-luck figure of American origin that arrived in 1912 and never left. You rub the soles of his feet. It is entirely silly and it is the single most photographed object in the building, and the local attachment to it is real rather than performed.

Since 2022 there has been a Tower Slider, a spiral steel tube that drops you from the third floor to the ground on the outside of the tower in about ten seconds. It is charged separately from the observation deck. It is loud, brief and entirely in keeping with a building that has never once taken itself seriously.

There is also a walk-out deck above the main observatory with an open-air section. In practice the most interesting view from Tsutenkaku is downward, not outward: the grid of Shinsekai immediately below, the strings of kushikatsu signs, Tennoji Park and the Abeno Harukas tower behind it. It explains the neighbourhood, which is more than the panorama does.

If you hold an Osaka Amazing Pass, the tower, the slider and the Dive and Walk attraction are all covered, and ¥1,500 is now a large enough line that it materially changes whether that ¥3,500 pass pays off. Reservation requirements still apply to pass holders.

Open 9:00 to 21:45 with last entry at 21:00, which is late enough that a post-dinner visit works – and dinner in Shinsekai means kushikatsu, ten minutes away on foot. Reserve your slot online in advance; slots for the hour after sunset go first.

Ebisucho on the Sakaisuji subway line is the closest station, about three minutes’ walk. From Shin-Imamiya on the JR Loop Line it is around ten minutes. Note that the metro and the Loop are run by different companies and are not through-ticketed, which is dealt with on the Namba to Shinsekai walk.