Tamara Hinson takes a deep dive into Osaka, otherwise known as Japan’s kitchen, to find the city’s best places to eat It’s 9pm in Dotonbori , a neighbourhood in downtown Osaka, and I’m feeding coins into a vending machine. My reward isn’t a can of hot coffee (one of the more unusual items dispensed by these machines) or a box-fresh shirt (popular with office workers, apparently). It’s a paper ticket I hand to a waitress who ushers me inside the tiny restaurant – one of dozens dotted throughout Dotonbori.
The ticket lists the items I’ve ordered (takoyaki, small, fried balls of dough filled with chunks of squid, and a glass of Suntory beer ) which arrive at my table three minutes later. READ MORE: How to travel around Japan by train and use the rail system successfully.
