南船場

Minami-Semba is lined with stylish cafes with open terraces, designer shops that began in Osaka, hair salons with ideas of their own, and a great many other places with a character of their own. It is the quarter bounded by Nagahori-dori on the south, Yotsubashi-suji on the west, Midosuji on the east and Chuo-odori on the north. Until a dozen or so years ago it was a quiet town of craftsmen with many timber merchants, but in the first half of the 1990s several new buildings around Minami-Semba 4-chome, the Organic Building among them, drew attention, and designers began to gather. Then shops moved in from Shinsaibashi and Amerikamura, and the number of expensive clothing shops, cafes and restaurants aimed at people in their late twenties and above grew steadily to what it is now. Besides the well-known shops there are many quiet ones hidden as tenants in the buildings, without so much as a sign outside, and hunting for them may be the Minami-Semba way to enjoy the place.

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