Osaka: eat until you drop, then eat one more skewer

Osaka has a word for itself — kuidaore, to ruin yourself by eating — and it is not really a joke. The city built its wealth as a merchant port, kept the blunt humour that came with it, and turned dinner into the main event. Dotonbori is the proof: a canal lined with animated signs, the running Glico man, a mechanical crab the size of a car, and stalls turning takoyaki with metal picks until the batter balls come loose. About two kilometres south in Shinsekai, under the Tsutenkaku tower, kushikatsu bars deep-fry everything on a skewer and post the same rule on every wall — never double-dip the communal sauce.

Daylight belongs elsewhere. Osaka Castle sits on cyclopean stone blocks inside a double moat, rebuilt in concrete but ringed by some 3,000 cherry trees that make early April the busiest fortnight of the year. Kuromon Ichiba runs for 600 metres of fishmongers grilling scallops and slicing tuna to order; Nakazakicho, a pocket of pre-war houses that survived the bombing, has filled up with second-hand shops and coffee roasters; and Umeda's rooftop Floating Garden Observatory gives you the whole grid at night.

Osakans will tell you they are the funny ones — this is the home of manzai double-act comedy — and the city does feel looser than Tokyo or Kyoto. People talk to strangers, escalator etiquette runs the opposite way, and okonomiyaki, the cabbage-heavy savoury pancake, is cooked on the griddle set into your own table. It is also the natural base for Nara, Kobe and Himeji, all under an hour by train.