Day 8: Osaka at Night (Umeda Sky Building)

We arrived late to Osaka after a whole day travelling from Huis Ten Bosch through 3 trains. We decided to visit the Umeda Sky Building for dinner, and then afterwards go to the rooftop to experience cityscapes of Osaka at Night.

The Umeda Sky Building (梅田スカイビル) is the nineteenth-tallest building in Osaka and one of the city’s most recognisable landmarks. It consists of two 40-story towers that connect at their two uppermost stories, with bridges and an escalator crossing the wide atrium-like space in the centre.

The building features a rooftop observatory, The Floating Garden (Kuchu Teien) Observatory. The views of Osaka at Night from the here are simply stunning. I also found the bridges and escalator amazing.

The basement contains an underground level mainly full of restaurants. The Showa Retro Shopping Street (Takimi Koji) reproduces a townscape of the Showa period. There are also some heritage items on display here, to further evoke a sense of pre war Osaka.

We had problems finding an inexpensive place to eat here. We ended up having curry at Curry House CoCo Ichibanya. This is part of a chain of curry houses, originally established in 1978 and now spread around the world. They have an interesting menu, including vegetarian curry options and a mix of omuraisu and curry.

At the base of the towers is an urban garden with walking trails and water features.

I found out later the original design of the building featured four interconnected towers. Unfortunately, they only managed to construct two of the four towers after the Bubble Burst. The 173m building was completed in 1993.

For more information, the website has an English section.