Shinsaibashi-suji

A covered arcade running about 600 metres north from Dotonbori, roofed the whole way, with something like 180 shops along it. Merchants have traded on this street since the Edo period, and it has been Osaka's main shopping street for most of the time since.

The roof is the practical point. Osaka rains hard and gets very hot, and Shinsaibashi-suji works in both, which is why it fills up when the weather is bad. On a wet Sunday afternoon you move at the pace of the crowd and no faster.

The shops themselves are mostly chains: fashion, drugstores stacked with cosmetics and stocked for tax-free buying, shoes, phone accessories. It is not where you find anything unusual. What it does have is Daimaru Shinsaibashi, the department store at the southern end, whose 1933 building by the American architect William Merrell Vories is one of the best Art Deco interiors in Japan. The store was rebuilt in 2019 and the facade and much of the detail were kept.

Midosuji runs parallel one block west, a wide boulevard lined with ginkgo trees and the flagship stores of European luxury brands, and it is where the money actually is. Amerikamura is west of that, three blocks of vintage clothing, record shops and teenagers.

Walk south and the arcade delivers you to the Ebisubashi bridge, the Glico sign, and Dotonbori's food streets. Most people do the whole run in one direction over an afternoon.