I live in Osaka

As I have stated several times previously in this column (including in the header), I live in Japan. But thus far, I probably haven’t given you a particularly good idea of the place. Sure, there are plenty of images out there concerning Japan: the gleaming metropolis of Tokyo, the ethereal beauty and stately grace of ancient shrines and temples, even giant monster movies and photos of wartime destruction. While my experience certainly involves some of these things, it’s difficult to encapsulate my entire experience briefly… because I live in Osaka. Osaka, you see, is not what would be defined as “typical” or “ordinary” in Japan. In many ways, it’s its own animal, and over the course of these columns, I’m probably going to have to stop and explain to you many times that what’s true here does not always hold for all of Japan. So please bear with me as I attempt to introduce the place where I live…

First, the basics: Osaka is the center of Japan’s second-largest metropolitan area (the largest, whose name the people here speak with a sort of dismissive tone, is Tokyo). The city itself is home to 2.6 million people and the workplace of a million more, while the entire metropolitan region (including the nearby cities of Kobe and Kyoto) is upwards of 18 million, or roughly one-seventh of the entire Japanese population. I guess what I’m trying to say is, there’s no shortage of people.

Osaka also has its own particular character compared to other places in Japan, which could be summed up in a few general areas. The first is its commercial bent. Going back to the period of the Tokugawa Shogunate (which is 1600-1868; I apologize in advance if I sometimes forget to explain certain things that are common knowledge here), Osaka was home to lots and lots of merchants, while many of the samurai and the feudal lords they protected were off in Edo (modern-day Tokyo). This gave the merchant townspeople pretty much free reign to do what they do best, and this entrepreneurial spirit lives on in the present day. No matter where in the city you go, you’re bound to run into a covered shopping arcade (or several), and even in areas of the city which have been extensively redeveloped with high-rises, this is only to make way for – you guessed it – more places where you can buy stuff. One of Osaka’s most famous sights, the row of restaurants and stores along the Dotonbori canal, is chiefly recognizable by its billboards: larger than life, they tower over the heads of shoppers, illuminated in neon or featuring elaborate figures like moving crabs or running men. There’s even an old joke that says people in Osaka don’t greet each other with “hello,” but “how’s business?”. It may only be a joke, but it certainly has a ring of truth to it.

The next thing that sets Osaka apart is its casual feel. This may not seem like a big deal back in America, where casual dress and demeanor have become something of an institution (I am convinced that at this rate, one day we Americans will wear suits as an act of rebellion against stifling informality), but in a country which considers proper decorum a virtue and always knowing one’s place a necessity, Osaka is shockingly relaxed. This doesn’t exactly put it on the same level as the US, mind you – I only recently stopped having to wear a suit and tie to work – but in Japan, this is a big deal. For one thing, when you speak to other people, you’re supposed to either use their professional title, or apply an honorific suffix to their name such as “–san” or “–sensei” to show you respect them. Calling someone by their name alone (known as “yobisute”) indicates either that you’re very close to them, or that you have nothing but contempt for them. But in Osaka, this rule is a lot less rigid: here, when someone you barely know drops the “–san” from the end of your name, they’re (probably) not trying to start a fight – they just want to be friendly. This is partly why people from Osaka are seen as being “rude” or “improper” elsewhere in Japan, but that’s really not the case. They just don’t care quite so much about being “proper” all the time.

The third big aspect of Osaka is its, er, grittiness. While it’s supposedly a lot better than it was, Osaka is a (relatively) grimy, industrial port, especially when you compare it to more cosmopolitan locales like Tokyo and nearby Kobe. Things are more functional than elegant, the trains aren’t as fancy, and a haze hangs over the city in a way I haven’t seen elsewhere in my (admittedly somewhat limited) travels across Japan. In my mind, this helps contribute somewhat to a real down-to-earth, lived-in kind of feel, but it also means that Osaka has a reputation in Japan as “dirty”, “dangerous”, “unsavory”, “poor”, “overrun by the mafia”, et cetera. I don’t really think this is entirely fair, but it is certainly true that Osaka lags behind other parts of Japan in terms of measures such as income, unemployment, academic performance, and the like. The prefecture is also deeply in debt, which isn’t helped by its current governor, who seems determined to steer the ship even further aground by cutting funding for things like education first and foremost. (Japan has various and sundry areas of bureaucratic bloat, but the school system in Osaka is under-funded as it is.) This leads me to the last major area of Osaka…

And that is, of course, the food. But unfortunately, to adequately cover the cuisine of the city known as the “Nation’s Kitchen”, it’s going to take me a lot more space to describe even one of the many things you can eat here in full. But, what makes me especially happy is that people in Osaka are statistically much more likely than those from other parts of Japan to share in my distaste for natto – gooey, rank-smelling fermented soybeans that I avoid like the plague. They’re marketed as a health food, but if that’s what it takes to be healthy, I’d prefer some form of painful medical treatment instead.

Of course, even this description doesn’t fully do justice to the place where I live. After all, there are still plenty of shrines and temples, and ancient burial mounds, and tons of mass transportation, and then there’s the aforementioned food, and— and—… hmm. Well, I suppose at the very least, I won’t be wanting for future subjects. Until then, I hope you’ll find this all-too-brief portrait of Osaka mildly entertaining, if entirely inadequate. Till next time…