Osaka Castle Quarter & Shinsekai Night Walk

Osaka Castle was built from 1583 by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the warlord who unified Japan, as the largest and most imposing castle of its time. After Hideyoshi's death, his heirs were defeated by the Tokugawa in 1615, and the castle was destroyed. The Tokugawa rebuilt it on an even grander scale in the 1620s, and most of the stone walls and moats you see today date from that reconstruction. The main keep was lost again to lightning in 1665, and the present keep, built of concrete in 1931, houses a museum about Hideyoshi and the castle's history.

The walk begins at the Otemon, the main gate, at 2:00 PM. Your guide leads you through the castle park, which covers more than a hundred hectares, past gates, turrets and moats. The scale of the stone walls is striking: some blocks weigh more than a hundred tonnes, brought from quarries across western Japan by the feudal lords who were ordered to build them. The Tako-ishi, the Octopus Stone, near the Sakuramon Gate, is one of the largest.

You can visit the museum in the keep and climb to the observation floor, which looks out over the park and the city. In spring, from late March to early April, the park's cherry trees make it one of the most popular places for hanami, cherry blossom viewing, in Osaka, and in autumn the ginkgo and maple leaves turn gold and red.

In the late afternoon, the walk moves by subway to Shinsekai, the New World, a district built in 1912 as an entertainment quarter modelled on Paris and New York, with the Tsutenkaku Tower at its heart. The original tower was dismantled during the Second World War, and the current tower was built in 1956. Today, Shinsekai has a retro atmosphere, with neon signs, old-fashioned game halls, shogi parlours and restaurants that stay open late.

Shinsekai is the home of kushikatsu, skewers of meat, seafood and vegetables coated in batter and breadcrumbs and deep-fried. They are dipped in a shared pot of sauce, and the rule, displayed in every restaurant, is no double-dipping. Your guide takes you to a specialist restaurant for a tasting, and explains the history of the dish and the district.

As night falls, the tower and the district's signs light up, and the streets fill with locals and visitors. Your guide can recommend places to continue the evening, in Shinsekai or nearby Namba.

The best times to visit are spring and autumn. Summer is hot and humid, and winter is cold but clear.

The walk lasts around five hours. An expert guide, Osaka Castle entry, a park walk, a Shinsekai evening walk and a kushikatsu tasting are included.