Osaka Local Quiz Practice: Questions and Explanations

Correct answerGlico

The Glico Sign, Dōtonbori's landmark, is Ezaki Glico's advertising tower; the 1935 original was a 33-meter neon spectacular. Today's sign is the sixth generation, converted to LED panels in 2014. The runner breasting the finish-line tape has been the company's trademark since its founding.

Source:道頓堀グリコサイン（Wikipedia）

Correct answerOsaka Castle

Toyotomi Hideyoshi began building Osaka Castle in 1583. His castle was lost in the summer siege of 1615; the Tokugawa shogunate's rebuilt keep was also later lost. The present keep, the third on the site, was raised during the Showa era — a steel-reinforced concrete tower that houses a museum inside.

Source:大坂城（Wikipedia）

Correct answerTakoyaki

Takoyaki is Osaka's signature flour-based dish. Endō Tomekichi of Aizuya, founded in 1933, first swapped the konnyaku of "radio-yaki" for beef, then in 1935 — inspired by Akashi's egg-and-octopus style — created today's version and coined the name. Slathering it with sauce became standard only after the war.

Source:たこ焼き（Wikipedia）

Correct answerImamiya Ebisu Shrine

Imamiya Ebisu Shrine in Naniwa Ward, Osaka City, is affectionately known as 'Ebessan,' the god of business prosperity. Every January 9-11 it hosts 'Toka Ebisu,' drawing crowds seeking 'fuku-zasa' -- bamboo branches decorated with lucky charms.

Source:今宮戎神社（Wikipedia）

Correct answerKuromon Market

Kuromon Market is a shopping street in Nipponbashi, Chuo Ward, Osaka City, where about 150 shops -- mostly fishmongers -- line a roughly 580-meter arcade. It thrived as a fresh fish and produce market after the war and came to be nicknamed 'Naniwa's Kitchen' and 'Osaka's Stomach.'

Source:黒門市場（Wikipedia）

Correct answerMinami

"Minami" is the district built around Namba, Shinsaibashi, Dōtonbori, and Sennichimae; "Kita" centers on Umeda and Kitashinchi. Minami inherits the flavor of the old theater quarter along the Dōtonbori canal, while Kita grew up around the railway terminals — together, Osaka's twin downtowns.

Source:ミナミ（Wikipedia）キタ（Wikipedia）

Correct answerICOCA

ICOCA is the IC card issued by JR West, introduced in the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe area in 2003. Its name plays on the Kansai dialect phrase 'ikoka' ('shall we go?'), and it is also accepted on Osaka Metro and the area's private railways.

Source:ICOCA（Wikipedia）

Correct answerMyaku-Myaku

Myaku-Myaku is the official character of Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, held on the island of Yumeshima. A curious being born when cells merged with pure water, its red parts stand for cells and its blue for flowing water; the name evokes life pulsing on — myaku-myaku — from one generation to the next.

Source:公式キャラクターミャクミャクについて（EXPO 2025 大阪・関西万博公式Webサイト）

Correct answerTrue

In the Edo period the feudal domains lined Nakanoshima and Dōjima with their warehouse-residences — reportedly over 120 in the Tenpō era — where tax rice and regional goods from across Japan were stored and sold. As the great clearinghouse of the nation's produce, Osaka earned the name "the nation's kitchen."

Source:天下の台所（コトバンク）蔵屋敷（コトバンク）

Correct answerTrue

Kansai International Airport opened in September 1994 on a reclaimed island about 5 km off the Senshū coast. With no neighbors to disturb, it became Japan's first fully 24-hour airport, and it is regarded as the world's first airport built entirely on an artificial island.

Source:関西国際空港（Wikipedia）

Correct answerShitennoji

Shitennō-ji is said to have been founded in 593, when Prince Shōtoku fulfilled a vow made during his struggle with the Mononobe clan. Its plan — middle gate, pagoda, golden hall, and lecture hall on a single north-south axis — defines the "Shitennō-ji style" of Asuka-period temple layout. The other choices are all Nara temples.

Source:四天王寺（Wikipedia）

Correct answerSumiyoshi Taisha

Sumiyoshi Taisha is the head shrine of Japan's roughly 2,300 Sumiyoshi shrines and the ichinomiya of old Settsu Province. Its four main halls, built in the straight-roofed "Sumiyoshi-zukuri" style — among the oldest forms of shrine architecture — are National Treasures, and the vermilion arched bridge at its entrance is the emblem of "Sumiyossan."

Source:住吉大社（Wikipedia）

Correct answerTekijuku

Tekijuku was the Dutch-studies academy that the physician Ogata Kōan opened in Osaka's merchant quarter in 1838. It trained many of the figures who would shape the Meiji era, from Fukuzawa Yukichi to Ōmura Masujirō, and is counted as a forerunner of Osaka University. The surviving school building in Kitahama is an Important Cultural Property.

Source:適塾（Wikipedia）

Correct answerIt is considered Japan's oldest amusement park that has never been torn down and rebuilt

Hirakata Park is run by Keihan Leisure Service, part of the Keihan Electric Railway group; its roots go back to 1910 via a predecessor chrysanthemum-doll exhibition. It is considered Japan's oldest amusement park that has continued operating without ever being torn down. The park that opened in 2001, USJ, has a different operator.

Source:ひらかたパーク（Wikipedia）京阪レジャーサービス

Correct answerSen no Rikyu

Sen no Rikyū, born to a Sakai merchant family, studied under Takeno Jōō and perfected the austere "wabi-cha" style of tea. Serving as tea master to Nobunaga and then Hideyoshi, he was counted among the three great masters of the age — until Hideyoshi ordered his seppuku, for reasons still debated.

Source:千利休（Wikipedia）

Correct answerChikamatsu Monzaemon

Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1724) wrote for the Takemoto-za puppet theater as its house playwright. His "Love Suicides at Sonezaki" (1703) dramatized a real double suicide of the previous month, founding the vogue for shinjū plays about ordinary townspeople. Ihara Saikaku, among the choices, wrote ukiyo-zōshi prose fiction.

Source:近松門左衛門（コトバンク）

Correct answerKobayashi Ichizo

Kobayashi Ichizō founded the Minoo-Arima Electric Tramway — today's Hankyū — and invented the private-railway business model: developing housing along the line, creating the Takarazuka Revue (begun as a choir in 1913), and topping the terminal with a department store. He also founded Tōhō, and railways nationwide copied his playbook.

Source:小林一三（Wikipedia）

Correct answerHankai Tramway

The Hankai Tramway is Osaka Prefecture's last surviving streetcar. Its Hankai Line runs from Ebisuchō to Hamadera-ekimae and its Uemachi Line from Tennōji-ekimae to Sumiyoshi, linking southern Osaka with Sakai. Sumiyoshi Taisha sits along the route, packing the cars every New Year.

Source:阪堺電気軌道（Wikipedia）

Correct answerMinoo Otaki

Minoo Falls drops about 33 meters and is listed among Japan's 100 famous waterfalls. The surrounding Meiji-no-Mori Minoo Quasi-National Park, designated in 1967, blazes with autumn color improbably close to the metropolis — and the local souvenir, "momiji tempura," really is maple leaves fried in sweet batter.

Source:箕面滝（Wikipedia）明治の森箕面国定公園（Wikipedia）

Correct answerDanjiri Festival

The Kishiwada Danjiri Festival, held each September in and around the old castle town, is said to date back to the Edo period. Its great spectacle is the "yarimawashi" — wrenching a speeding float through a right-angle turn at an intersection — while the daiku-gata dances on the roof above.

Source:岸和田だんじり祭（Wikipedia）

Correct answerTenjinbashisuji Shopping Street

Tenjinbashi-suji shopping street runs about 2.6 km with some 600 shops — by repute Japan's longest. It began with an early-Edo produce market and prospered as the approach to Osaka Tenmangū shrine. Walking it end to end takes roughly ten thousand steps, and the merchants issue a certificate to prove the feat.

Source:天神橋筋商店街（Wikipedia）

Correct answerYumeshima

Yumeshima, a roughly 390-hectare artificial island in Konohana Ward, hosted Expo 2025 from April to October — reportedly the first world exposition ever surrounded by the sea on all sides. Ahead of opening day the Osaka Metro Chūō Line was extended to the new Yumeshima Station. Maishima and Sakishima are its neighbors.

Source:夢洲（Wikipedia）

Correct answerMizu-nasu (water eggplant)

Mizunasu, the pride of the Senshū region, is so juicy that squeezing it draws water, and with almost no astringency it can be eaten raw — rare for an eggplant. Its lightly fermented rice-bran pickle is a summer delicacy known nationwide, and some trace its lineage to the "sawa-nasu" of a Muromachi-era text. Kamo eggplant belongs to Kyoto.

Source:水なす（Wikipedia）

Correct answerTenjin Matsuri / Gion Matsuri

Japan's "three great festivals" are usually counted as Osaka's Tenjin Matsuri, Kyoto's Gion Matsuri, and Tokyo's Kanda Matsuri. The Tenjin Matsuri, the rite of Osaka Tenmangū, caps about a month of observances on July 25, when the boat procession and votive fireworks fill the Ōkawa river. Nebuta belongs to Aomori and Yosakoi to Kōchi.

Source:天神祭（Wikipedia）

Correct answerAbout 300 m

Abeno Harukas, fully opened in 2014, rises 60 stories and 300 meters — Japan's first "supertall" building. Planted directly above the Tennōji-Abeno rail terminal, it stacks a department store, a hotel, and an art museum, with the Harukas 300 observatory on floors 58 to 60.

Source:あべのハルカス（Wikipedia）

Correct answerHanaten

放出 is read "Hanaten," a district straddling Tsurumi and Jōtō wards. The favored etymology holds that this was the outlet where the ancient Kawachi lake "released" (hanachide) its waters toward the Yodo River, the word softening over time; folklore instead blames a stolen sacred sword "thrown out" here. One of Osaka's trickiest place names.

Source:放出（Wikipedia）

Correct answerIshiyama Honganji

Where Osaka Castle now stands, the Ishiyama Honganji — head temple of the True Pure Land school — ruled a fortified temple town and fought Oda Nobunaga for eleven years in the Ishiyama War. It burned just after surrendering the site in 1580, and Hideyoshi later claimed the same strategic height for his castle.

Source:石山本願寺（Wikipedia）

Correct answerNaniwa Palace

Naniwa Palace began as the Nagara-Toyosaki palace of Emperor Kōtoku after the Taika reforms; in the Nara period Emperor Shōmu maintained a later palace on the same ground. The site, spreading south of Osaka Castle, is now a historical park where the platform of the great audience hall has been restored.

Source:難波宮（Wikipedia）

Correct answerOshio Heihachiro

Ōshio Heihachirō, a former yoriki official of the Osaka magistracy and a Wang Yangming scholar who ran the Senshindō academy, rose in revolt in 1837 with his students after his pleas to relieve famine victims were rejected. The rising was crushed within a day, but the shock it dealt the shogunate was lasting.

Source:大塩平八郎（コトバンク）

Correct answerKurayashiki (warehouse residences)

Kurayashiki were combined warehouses and trading posts where the shogunate and the domains stored and sold tax rice and local products. Osaka, "the nation's kitchen," had by far the most — clustered on Nakanoshima and Dōjima, reportedly 124 of them in the Tenpō era — feeding directly into the Dōjima rice market.

Source:蔵屋敷（コトバンク）

Correct answerShamisen

Bunraku unites three professions — the tayū who narrates, the shamisen player who scores the scene, and the puppeteers who work each figure three to a puppet. An art perfected in Osaka, it is inscribed on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list, with the National Bunraku Theatre in Nipponbashi as its home stage.

Source:文楽（Wikipedia）

Correct answerNaka Jinbei

Naka Jinbei, headman of Imagome village in Kawachi (now Higashiōsaka), petitioned the shogunate for years to reroute the flood-prone Yamato River. When work finally came in 1704, the new channel to the sea at Sakai took only about eight months to dig, and new rice fields soon spread across the old riverbed.

Source:中甚兵衛（Wikipedia）大和川付替え（Wikipedia）

Correct answerFunatogyo

On the night of the main festival, July 25, the funatogyo sends a fleet — led by the boat bearing the deity's spirit — up and down the Ōkawa river. With bonfires, lanterns, and votive fireworks mirrored on the water, the Tenjin Matsuri is called "the festival of fire and water," closing about a month of observances.

Source:天神祭（Wikipedia）

Correct answerMoated city (kango toshi)

Medieval Sakai was a moated city, ringed by channels like the Doi River, that grew rich on trade with Ming China and with European ships. Its affairs were run by a council of leading merchants, the egōshū — ten members in the late fifteenth century, records suggest — making Sakai the exemplar of Japan's self-governing towns.

Source:会合衆（コトバンク）

Correct answerOkawa

The Ōkawa is the common name for the old Yodo's lower course, splitting from the modern Yodo River at Kema and dividing around Nakanoshima into the Dōjima River on the north and the Tosabori on the south. "Old" only since the 1907 flood channel opened, it still hosts the Tenjin Matsuri boats and the Mint's famous cherry-blossom walk.

Source:旧淀川（Wikipedia）

Correct answerSenba kotoba

Senba kotoba is the polished Osaka speech cultivated in the merchant houses of Senba, the city's commercial heart, rich in honorifics borrowed from Kyoto. Once praised as almost aristocratic in its refinement, it faded rapidly with postwar changes in commerce and survives today mainly on the rakugo stage.

Source:大阪弁（Wikipedia）

Correct answerFuruichi

The Mozu-Furuichi Kofun Group, inscribed in 2019 as Osaka's first World Heritage site, comprises 49 tombs in 45 entries across the Mozu area of Sakai and the Furuichi area of Habikino and Fujiidera. Built from the late fourth to the late fifth century, they are the monumental graves of ancient Japan's rulers.

Source:百舌鳥・古市古墳群（Wikipedia）

Correct answer放出 (Hanaten)

Hanaten (放出) is the Osaka entry, its name said to derive from the outlet that "released" the waters of the ancient Kawachi lake. Zōshiki is in Tokyo, Gumyōji in Yokohama, and Kakamigahara in Gifu. Osaka abounds in such puzzles — Kireuriwari, Kumata, and Kunijima among them.

Source:放出（Wikipedia）

Correct answerConstruction of Naniwa Palace → The era of Ishiyama Honganji → Toyotomi Hideyoshi's construction of Osaka Castle → The Summer Siege of Osaka

Oldest first: Naniwa Palace (7th century), the Ishiyama Honganji era (16th century), Hideyoshi's castle (1583), and the summer siege that ended the Toyotomi (1615). The sequence shows one and the same height of the Uemachi plateau serving as Osaka's main stage — ancient capital, temple fortress, and warlord's castle in turn.

Source:難波宮（Wikipedia）大坂城（Wikipedia）

Correct answerAbout 486 m

The Daisen Kofun's mound runs about 486 meters long and 35 meters high — Japan's largest. A triple moat rings it, and the walking path around the outer edge measures roughly 2.8 km. It is sometimes grouped with Khufu's pyramid and the First Qin Emperor's mausoleum as one of the world's three great tombs.

Source:大仙陵古墳（Wikipedia）