Kuidaore 食い倒れ
“Eat till you drop”
(くいだおれ)
Osaka’s motto is kuidaore, translated as “eat till you drop” or sometimes as “eat until you go bankrupt”. The kanji version of kuidaore is 食い倒れ, which has the Chinese characters for “eat” 食 and “fall down” 倒. Needless to say, I was convinced Osaka was going to be the equivalent of my “spirit animal” for a city long before I set foot in it.
Osaka is also known as Tenka no daidokoro or “the nation’s kitchen”, tracing its roots to the Edo Period when Kyoto was Japan’s capital and Osaka developed as its economic center. Apparently, only the royalty could flaunt their wealth in old Japan so the wealthy merchants of Osaka showed off the only way they could: with food. Delicious, abundant food — the more outrageous/expensive/over-the-top, the better! I had the impression that Osaka would be a scrappier version of Tokyo, and while that notion is not wrong, such a reductive statement does this great city a grave injustice.
We arrived in Kansai International Airport in early November after spending a week in the Philippines, which was essentially nonstop eating over reunions with friends and family. We’d spent our last night with Jordan’s family in Pampanga (about an hour north of Manila), so we started our day at 3:30 AM in order to get to NAIA 3 (the international airport in Manila) by 5:30 AM for our 8:30 AM flight. We arrived in only 1.5 hours thanks to the new highways like the Northern Luzon Expressway (NLEX), Skyway and SLEX. Even the terminal was still mostly asleep and only a handful of restaurants were open, so we grabbed a coffee in the airport McDo before getting on the AirAsia flight to Osaka. This one seemed shorter and more bearable than the flight from Tokyo to Manila; then again, there was no 1+ hour delay to start for “cargo loading” and I was probably asleep for more of it.
It took us the better part of the afternoon to get to the hotel. We exchanged the Klook voucher for the Nankai Rapi:t train from the airport fairly smoothly and took another uneventful ride on their wonderful express trains. The cab from Namba station was only challenging because we did not find the cab stand quickly in the gigantic complex that is Namba Station (25+ exits), but it was only JPY600 (USD$4) to the hotel.
We got to our hotel room with its king-size bed crammed into a space barely larger than the bed, parked our bags in the nonexistent hallway by the restroom door, and passed out for two solid hours. We woke up to an air conditioner that wasn’t doing much to cool the tiny ass room despite having adjusted the thermostat to 22C and letting two hours go by. We moved to a room a couple of doors down where the aircon seemed to be blowing cooler air, but the safe didn’t work. The flustered front desk clerk assured us (through a series of Google translate screens) that the electronics would reset in a little bit. So we headed out for dinner, still unpacked, since we had no choice but to take his word for it.
A friend had suggested trying Ichiran on the Dotombori if we wanted experience “booth ramen” and we ended up in line for over an hour at one of their two branches nearby. Ichiran is not the only restaurant with several outposts close to one another in the Dotombori due to the demand and it is remarkable how many people visit this vibrant gastronomic marketplace just to eat.
The queue began outside the restaurant, down a hallway, snaked around the corner to another hallway which contained the vending machines to actually order the ramen (plus add-ons like eggs and drinks), then up another two flights of stairs to where the 30 booths are located. We were handed a little sheet of paper to customize our ramen while we waited in line: how much pork, how spicy, noodle firmness, amount of garlic, etc.. and they display the ramen preferences of famous Ichiran diners by framing their sheets and hanging them up on the walls.


A “switchboard” panel just outside the entrance to the booths was lit up in green and red lights (steady or blinking) to indicate which booths were vacant/occupied. We were finally seated in adjacent booths #22 and #21. Soon after we sat down, the curtain at the back of the booth was drawn up and a disembodied pair of hands took the order stubs from the vending machine and the sheet of paper for our ramen preferences.
On Ichiran’s website, I read that the founder worked in a ramen shop and designed his business around the feedback from customers over time. Being able to customize the ramen is a result of that feedback. The underlying philosophy behind the booths has to do with being able to enjoy one’s bowl of ramen without distractions. He also noticed that a lot of women were self-conscious about enjoying a bowl of noodles in public since they can’t slurp (despite the double standard for men who are encouraged to do so). The booth is set up so that diners don’t have to talk to anyone if they don’t want to. There are wooden message tiles hanging on the right side wall of the booth (along with Extra Order forms) that say:
- “I don’t know the online ordering process.”
- “I’d like a kid’s bowl and utensils.”
- “I’m leaving my seat for a moment.”
- “It’s noisy.” …which is intriguing because I find it unlikely that a) someone amongst the very polite Japanese would be noisy enough to be disruptive and b) another customer would feel strongly enough about the situation to complain about it. It’s probably my fellow tourists who are the most irritating, with all our cameras and chattering between booths.



My drink and soft-boiled egg came out first, then the ramen was delivered minutes later when the curtain went back up and another set of hands slid the bowl through with a flourish. I chose the signature tonkatsu broth and it was a solid bowl of ramen, but it was the experience that made Ichiran truly unique.

Behind us, there were hooks on the wall for our jackets and bags. I love that practical storage solutions are almost always part of the restaurant experience in Japan where they have a place for your stuff (whether it’s a basket under the table or hooks on the wall) so you can enjoy your meal without wrestling with your bag and coats. In the women’s restroom, another surprise: 12 rolls of toilet paper, just because. I later posted the picture as a story on Instagram with the caption, “Uhm, why??” and my friend Christina commented, “Why not?” 🤣 (Side note: My mother was totally flummoxed. I don’t know how she even saw my story given her erratic computer skills, but when I called her from the rooftop of our hotel to show her the Osaka nightscape, she asked me what the wall of toilet paper was about. Of all the stories I post, of course she sees the one with the wall of toilet paper… 🤦🏻♀️)
We walked out of the restaurant into the bright lights and chaotic energy of the Dotombori. As promised, this “gastronomic wonderland” features blinding neon signs and countless restaurants, food stalls, and bars featuring their own animatronics and/or larger-than-life statues of people, octopuses (octopi?), crabs, dragons, or simply a giant version of the food they serve. Juhachiban 一球一塊, the takoyaki (octopus ball) stand we caught right before they closed for the night had a takoyaki the size of a small car hanging above their storefront. The baseline vibe was “over the top” and it was simply awesome.
We walked along the canal to get our bearings, gawking at the neon lights blanketing entire buildings. At what turned out to be the Ebisubashi Bridge, there was an especially dense crowd of people and policemen with bullhorns encouraged the foot traffic to keep moving. We didn’t know what was going on but the people were definitely keyed up and pretty excited about something. Celebrities, maybe? I love the liveliness of Asian cities at night, but Osaka was thrumming with a different sort of energy, almost like a cauldron about to bubble over. Everyone seemed to have their cameras up and filming. We couldn’t tell the locals apart from the tourists. As we skirted around the biggest throng of people using the side streets around Ebisubashi, we even passed a line of policemen marching two abreast towards the direction of the bridge.
Finally, we saw an excited group of people watching a baseball game at a restaurant/bar. There were so many people that they spilled out onto the street. Being from Boston, we are familiar with the ebbs and flows of emotion during an important ball game, when every pitch (and out) elicits either groans or cheers. Sure enough, it turned out that Osaka’s local team, the Hanshin Tigers, won the Japan Series for the first time in 38 years that night. It was the 7th game of the series and, much like the Red Sox, they had quite a few near misses and heartbreaking losses during their drought. They even have a curse of their own: the Curse of the Colonel. Apparently, during the exuberant celebrations in 1985, someone pitched a statue of the KFC founder into the Dotombori River and since then, the team’s fortunes have been erratic.
As one Reddit post puts it, “Osaka is Hanshin-crazy and the Dotombori is basically Crazy Central”. We found out later that there was a tradition of jumping into the canal from the Ebisubashi Bridge after significant wins. THAT explained all the police lining both sides of the bridge and restricting access to the closest stairways… and also why we saw two people in bright green, full-body leotards dragging an inflatable children’s pool through the streets. The last time the Hanshin Tigers won and revelers managed to jump into the filthy waters of the canal, there were outbreaks of nasty infections like conjunctivitis and UTIs in Osaka. It’s a good thing the police were prepared, because there were definitely several groups of drunken, excited fans cheering their way through the Dotombori that night. Their joy was infectious!



We finally came back to our hotel to find that our second room had not cooled and neither had the safe reset. We changed rooms yet again — this time to a lower floor and slightly bigger space, which made all the difference. We put another 20+ hour day of travel behind us and went to bed.