Dotonbori or Shinsekai?

They are both famous, both about food, and completely unalike. Choosing between them on the same evening is the mistake.

Dotonbori

Neon on the canal by Namba, the running Glico man, a mechanical crab over a doorway, and crowds moving slowly in both directions. This is the Osaka on the postcards and it earns it — at night it is genuinely spectacular.

The food here is takoyaki, walking, and photographs. The strip is very good at selling three things quickly to people who just arrived. The better eating is one street back from the canal, which is where a guide is worth having.

Go if: it is your first night, you want the spectacle, and you are happy eating standing up.

Shinsekai

Built for a 1912 exposition, styled after Paris and Coney Island, and then largely left alone for a century. Tsutenkaku tower stands in the middle of it. The result is shabby, bright, slightly ramshackle and much less polished than Dotonbori.

The food is kushikatsu — crumbed skewers, deep fried, eaten at a counter with a communal sauce pot and a strict no-double-dipping rule.

Go if: you want the atmosphere of an older Osaka, you like sitting down to eat, and you would rather be somewhere that is not primarily photographing itself.

The honest recommendation

Do both, on different nights. They are twenty minutes apart and they are not variations on a theme — they are two different cities.

If you genuinely only have one evening: Dotonbori, because the spectacle is unrepeatable elsewhere, and eat one street back from the canal rather than on it.