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Create an accountPrivate local guides in Osaka
Osaka is a city you are meant to eat, talk and wander your way through. These are the locals who will do it with you.
Osaka has never tried to be elegant, and that is exactly why people fall for it. The neon of Dotonbori and the old towers of Shinsekai are worth an evening, but the city really opens up somewhere else: in the covered shopping streets that run for a kilometre, the retro cafés of Nakazakicho, the flea markets that fill temple grounds on a Sunday morning, and the tiny standing bars where the person next to you starts a conversation whether you planned one or not.
Every guide on this page is a real person with their own page, their own photos and their own idea of a good day out. You write to them directly, agree the date, the meeting point and the price between you, and pay them without anything passing through us. Ikitorii takes no commission on the time you spend together. Osaka is also the easiest base in the country for a day out, so Nara, Kobe and Kyoto often end up in the conversation too.
Armine
Eat the way Osaka eats
Takoyaki, okonomiyaki and kushikatsu are the easy part. The harder part is knowing which stall is worth the queue, which counter has been run by the same family for forty years, and which izakaya will happily seat two foreigners at 9pm. A guide who eats here every week saves you from the version of Osaka that exists only for visitors.
Festivals, flea markets and retro streets
The calendar here is busy all year: neighbourhood matsuri, temple markets, second-hand stalls under the trees, summer evenings that turn a whole street into a party. Add the Showa-era arcades and an architecture that runs from 1920s brick to Osaka Castle, and you have a city that rewards walking slowly far more than ticking off a list.
How it works
Pick a guide whose page speaks to you and send them a message from Ikitorii. They answer in their own words, usually within a day, and the two of you take it from there. No booking fee, no fixed programme and nobody in the middle: just a local who wants to show you the Osaka they live in.