Nakanoshima Park

A waterside park between the Dojima and Tosabori rivers. About 1.5 km long and 10.6 hectares, a green oasis in the middle of the city, Nakanoshima Park was the first park Osaka opened, in Meiji 24 (1891). The park then held Osaka's first beer garden, which together with a café offered a city kind of rest, and high-class restaurants stood side by side inside it, the Western restaurant Ginsuiro and the Japanese restaurant Seikaro. Behind what is now the Central Public Hall there was a Noh stage called Suiryukan, where Kongo school Noh was performed regularly, and the Jiyutei Hotel, the only hotel in Osaka with rooms that foreigners could stay in, stood next to the Naniwa hot spring. It was a lavish park for its day. The park now has a rose garden of about 310 varieties and some 3,700 plants, at their best in mid-May and mid-October, and it is lit up at the end of the year, drawing crowds to see it. Retro buildings such as the Central Public Hall and the prefectural Nakanoshima Library stand nearby, and the scene has been chosen as one of the Hundred Greenery Selections of Osaka.

Translated from the Osaka Prefecture and Osaka City tourist listings (観光施設一覧, CC BY 4.0).