Osaka, the city that tells you to eat until you drop

The people of Osaka have a word, kuidaore, that roughly means "to eat yourself into bankruptcy". It is often set against a saying about the other great cities: the people of Kyoto ruin themselves on fine clothes, the people of Osaka on food. Whether or not that is fair to Kyoto, it captures something true about Osaka. This is a city that treats eating out as its main pleasure, values flavour and generosity over ceremony, and likes its food cheap, filling and plentiful.

The nation's kitchen

Osaka's appetite has a history. Under the Tokugawa shoguns, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, it was Japan's commercial capital. Rice from all over the country, the currency in which feudal lords were paid, was shipped to Osaka's warehouses and traded at its rice exchange. That exchange is often described as one of the first organised futures markets in the world. Fish, sake, soy sauce and every other foodstuff passed through its markets, and the city became known as tenka no daidokoro, "the nation's kitchen". It was a city of merchants rather than samurai, and its culture has always been more down to earth, louder and funnier than Kyoto's courtly reserve or Tokyo's official dignity. Osaka is also the home of much of Japan's comedy, and its dialect is famous for its warmth and bluntness.

What to eat

Takoyaki are the city's signature street food: balls of batter with a piece of octopus in the middle, cooked in moulded iron pans and turned with picks until they are round and crisp outside and molten inside. They come topped with sauce, mayonnaise, dried seaweed and bonito flakes, which wave in the heat. They were first made in Osaka in the 1930s, and the city still argues about who makes the best.

Okonomiyaki, the savoury pancake, is claimed by both Osaka and Hiroshima. In the Osaka style, the cabbage, batter and other ingredients are mixed together before cooking on a griddle, often at your own table. In Hiroshima they are layered. Kushikatsu are skewers of meat, fish and vegetables, deep-fried in breadcrumbs. They are served with a shared pot of sauce, and the most famous rule in Osaka dining is that you must never dip a skewer twice. Kitsune udon, noodles in broth topped with sweet fried tofu, is also said to have been born here.

Dotonbori, the canal-side entertainment district in the centre of the city, is the place to see Osaka's appetite at full volume. There are giant mechanical crabs and octopuses over the restaurant doors, neon reflected in the canal, the famous sign of a running athlete, and crowds moving between food stalls well into the night. Kuromon Market, nearby, has been feeding the city since the nineteenth century and is good for seafood, fruit and snacks.

Beyond the food

Osaka is not only food. Its castle, built by the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the late sixteenth century, was the scene of his family's final defeat in 1615. The present keep is a 1930s reconstruction in concrete, now a museum, but the massive stone walls and moats are original, and the grounds are fine in the cherry blossom season. The city is also a convenient base, within an hour or so of both Kyoto and Nara.

G Adventures' Japan: Castles and Cuisine, five nights in October and December, is a short trip that takes in Kyoto, Hiroshima and Miyajima Island, and Osaka.

G Adventures' Signature: Japan's Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, eleven nights in spring and September, includes Dotonbori in Osaka on a longer route from Tokyo through Hakone and the castle town of Hagi to Kyoto and Hiroshima.

G Adventures' Korea to Japan: Epic Eats and Bright City Lights, fourteen nights in January, is built around food. Its Japanese places are Tokyo, Takayama, Kyoto and Nara rather than Osaka, after the Korean leg through Seoul, Jeonju, Jeju and Busan. For anyone keen to add Osaka, it is close to both Kyoto and Nara.

Come hungry, and leave the diet at home. Osaka will not take it personally if you eat too much. It will be insulted if you don't.