I agree - Osaka is overrated

Last week, City-cost member @genkidesu shared an article listing Osaka City as one of the top 10 overrated cities in the world. I 100% agree! I have alluded to my disappointment with Osaka in blog posts and reviews on City-cost over the years, but now I will come out and say it straight - in my opinion, Osaka is the most overrated city in Japan. 

However, I have only ever been to Osaka twice. But one of those times I was there for about a week. Osaka Castle played a big part in shaping my negative impression of the city. After visiting other castles in Japan that genuinely impressed me, Osaka Castle felt like a huge let‑down. It’s undeniably beautiful from the outside, but once you step inside, the experience changes completely.

I also struggled with the abrasiveness of some of the people we met. I actually liked that people approached us and wanted to chat, but their manner was often quite blunt. Moreover, more than once they walked away mid‑conversation as if they’d suddenly lost interest. This usually happened right after they handed the kids candy. It’s a funny and genuinely charming Osaka idiosyncrasy though: almost every obaachan we met gave my children sweets.

The author of the article Genkidesu shared mentioned food as one of their disappointments and I found the same. Not only was the food itself underwhelming, but genuinely good restaurants felt surprisingly hard to find and oddly spaced out. When I visited the first time with a friend, we also couldn’t find a decent bar to have a drink in - something we’ve never struggled with anywhere else in Japan, not even in tiny countryside villages!

Don’t get me wrong - I did like Osaka to a degree, and there are things about the city I genuinely enjoyed. I especially liked USJ, though I visited before the Harry Potter boom, so it wasn’t crowded and queuing was minimal. But overall, I personally wouldn’t recommend Osaka as a key destination. However, I do recognize that like many places that end up feeling overrated, my disappointment really came from expecting far too much.