Takimi-koji (Umeda)

Just beneath the landmark Sky Building in Umeda lies a living diorama of a Taisho era back alley restaurant town – complete with real eats.

Step off the escalator just inside the entrance of Sky Building and into a labyrinthine monument to nostalgia © Angelino Donnachaidh

There’s no sense burying the lede: Takimi-koji is a unique place. In Osaka’s Umeda area – a cluster of neighborhoods jam-packed with indoor restaurant malls and food courts of all varieties and shapes and sizes – it should be next to impossible to meaningfully stand out as yet another below-ground restaurant complex. And yet, it’s safe to say that there is really nowhere quite like Takimi-koji.

A sign marking the entrance to Takimi-koji © Angelino Donnachaidh

For better and for worse, that has little to do with the food. To be sure, this is just as good a place to stop for a meal as most of Umeda’s other eatery complexes. But to be just as sure, the meal isn’t the main reason most people visit.

Real retro ads from the Taisho and Showa periods fill out the atmosphere © Angelino Donnachaidh

Instead, Takimi-koji’s foremost allure lies in the fact that the basement level restaurant mall is built entirely as a living diorama of a Taisho period neighborhood. Nostalgia verging on caricature permeates the place in every detail. Perhaps the easiest way to describe it is as something akin to a “Japan Village” at Epcot Center or a World’s Fair, yet one conceived of, designed, and built entirely by the Japanese themselves.

Even the public bathrooms are built to look like the lobby of a public sento bathhouse, so convincingly that they can be disorienting if you’re not prepared – the sight very nearly triggered me to remove my shoes from automatic muscle memory.

The escalator to Takimi-koji from the entrance of Umeda Sky Building © Angelino Donnachaidh

Since the early 2010s, JR Osaka station and its surrounding Umeda area have been undergoing a transformation from a relatively normal downtown transit hub and business area into a hyper-dense megacity in miniature. Very nearly all of it is traversable on foot completely off of the street level through underground passageways or floating pedestrian bridges.

Takimi-koji is located in the basement of the Umeda Sky Building, whose architect Hiroshi Hara was perhaps the earliest visionary behind this sprawling vertically and horizontally integrated city complex. (Hara also designed the JR Kyoto Station building).

Umeda Sky Building is a pair of twin office and recreation towers joined at their tops by a viewing area and outdoor plaza complete with cafes and restaurants, floating above a park area and even small rice and vegetable gardens at their feet. Though it was an impressive proof of concept in the heady days of the late 1980s and early 1990s bubble economy, Hara was actually dreaming much bigger.

Underground shopfronts and stone paths form part of a living diorama © Angelino Donnachaidh

Hara’s ultimate vision for the area was something approaching a science fiction arcology. He saw it one day lined with massive towers all joined at their upper levels like tree trunks forming a canopy, a city on top of a city in which one could stroll for block after block of utopian urban living with everything they need without ever having to cross a street or look out for traffic.

What feels remarkable today is how prescient Hara’s vision for the area was. It might not look exactly like his architectural sketches, but it’s hard to deny that Umeda has functionally become much like he imagined.

Takimi-koji with some festive seasonal decor touches © Angelino Donnachaidh

Ironically, the Shin Umeda City neighborhood, of which Sky Building and Takimi-koji are the spiritual center, is still something of an island – as of yet not connected to either the floating or below-ground passageways that integrate the other neighborhoods of Umeda. Tragically, the 2025 visitor will still have to set foot on the actual surface and even cross a street or two to get here.

But it’s worth the trip. As a restaurant complex in a convenient location with a solid selection of options, sure. And all the moreso as a fascinating nexus of seemingly contradictory philosophical impulses: the prophetic but stunted futurism of Hiroshi Hara in the towers above, and the wistful but earnest nostalgia for cartoonishly simpler times – or perhaps the desire to come to grips with a lost past by memorializing it in impossibly statuesque idyll – in the basement below. There is something about this juxtaposition that seems to encapsulate so much about Japan’s cultural outlook today.

About Angelino Donnachaidh
Angelino Donnachaidh is a Mexican-American father, author, Japanese-English translator, and longtime resident of Osaka, Japan. His works include the middle grade (pre-)historical fiction novel Tamiu: A Cat’s Tale (Winner of the North Street Prize and CWA Muse Medallion), the YA post-cyberpunk heist adventure screenplay Brother (Winner of the HollywoodGenre 2025 Scifi Screenplay Competition), and the upcoming samurai scifi-fantasy action-thriller novel The Mayhem Protocols.

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Takimi-koji Information

Name in English:
Takimi-koji

Name in Japanese:
滝見小路

English address:
1 Chome-1-88 Oyodonaka, Kita Ward, Osaka, 531-0076
B1 Shin Umeda City (Sky Building)

Japanese address:
〒531-0076 大阪府大阪市北区大淀中1丁目1-88
B1 新梅田シティ（スカイビル）

Opening hours:
Vary from restaurant to restaurant. Some restaurants open for lunch and dinner while others open only for dinner. Average dinner hours span roughly 5:00-6:00pm until 9:00-10:00pm.

Non-smoking area: Yes

Nearest transport:
5-minute walk from Osaka Station on the JR Loop, Tokaido-Sanyo, and Osaka East Lines
6-minute walk from Osaka Umeda Station on the Hanshin Line
6-minute walk from Umeda Station on the Osaka Metro (Subway) Midosujii Line
7-minute walk from Osaka-Umeda Station on the Hankyu Kyoto, Kobe, and Takarazuka Main Lines

Website: Official website (Japanese)

Customer Reviews:
:: Read customer reviews of Takimi-koji on TripAdvisor.

Near To Here:
Takimi-koji is located in Osaka’s Kita and Umeda district. See our complete list of things to do in the Kita and Umeda district, including places to eat, nightlife and places to stay.

Best Osaka Restaurants
See our list of the best Osaka restaurants for even more ideas about great places to eat in Osaka.

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