Utsubo Park

A park in Utsubo Honmachi, part of Osaka's office district. It covers about 9.7 hectares in a long narrow strip, roughly 800 m east to west and 150 m north to south, and Naniwasuji, which runs north and south through the middle, divides it into the East Garden and the West Garden. The East Garden has the oldest rose garden in the city, the Utsubo tennis ground with ten courts, and an avenue of zelkovas that changes with the seasons; the West Garden has the Utsubo Tennis Center, with sixteen courts, which is also used for international tournaments. In Hideyoshi's time the area around here flourished as the Zakoba fish market and a district of dried and salted fish wholesalers, and it is said that Hideyoshi, hearing the fish merchants in the street selling with brisk cries of yasui, yasui, cheap, cheap, remarked that yasu, an arrow nest, means utsubo, the case for holding arrows, and the district took the name Utsubo from those words. Kyomachibori on the north side of the park has many smart cafés and homeware shops.

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