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A Day Trip to Osaka by Overnight Bus, 20 Years On | Genuinely Hard Going — but Dotonbori Was Worth It

2025.10.18

What is an overnight bus actually like? To answer that fairly simple question, I got on one for the first time in more than 20 years and went from Shinjuku to Osaka and back in a single day. The conclusion first, and honestly: the travelling itself was hard work. But the eating in Dotonbori, which I'd wanted to do for years, was far better than I'd imagined.

Here's how difficult a 20-years-later overnight bus really was, and what we managed to see and eat in Osaka on a day-trip's worth of time — as it happened, without polishing. If you're weighing up a long-distance trip by overnight bus, or a one-day run at Osaka, I hope this gives you something realistic to work with.

The trip in outline

First, the shape of the day.

• Departure: Busta Shinjuku, on the 23:30 overnight service
• Destination: Osaka (the Umeda, Namba and Dotonbori area)
• Format: a day trip by double-decker overnight bus — an *yakou basu*, the long-distance coaches that run through the night and are the cheapest way to cross the country
• Itinerary: arrive early morning → a full day walking and eating → the night bus home
• Cost: about ¥5,500 outbound, about ¥5,000 back
• Journey time: roughly 8–9 hours each way, sleeping on the bus

Against a flight or the shinkansen, the appeal is entirely the price. A little over ¥10,000 return puts a day trip well within casual reach. What you pay for it, you pay with your body — which is the main thing I want to get across here.

The bus, 20 years later: honestly hard

We started at Busta Shinjuku, arriving around 11 p.m. for the 23:30 departure. It had been a long time since I'd walked through Shinjuku that late, which was itself slightly thrilling. A lot of people were drunk, there were a great many visitors from abroad, and the whole area was lit up like Christmas.

One thing I hadn't planned for was dinner. I looked for somewhere open until 11, but most restaurants close at 10. I don't drink, which makes an izakaya awkward, so I ended up at McDonald's — the seasonal Tsukimi burger, as it happened, which I was perfectly happy with. And then onto the bus.

As for the ride itself, this was the hard part. It was a double-decker with a low ceiling, and the curtains stay shut for security and privacy, so you can't see out at all. Which means you have no idea how the bus is moving, and then it moves in a way you didn't expect — and I was thoroughly travel-sick. I've never had a strong stomach for vehicles, so this took its toll. I managed about an hour of half-sleep. I finished the night genuinely envious of anyone who can sleep properly on a bus.

If you're taking one: bring motion-sickness tablets, a neck pillow, an eye mask and earplugs. A small amount of preparation should make a real difference.

Arriving in Osaka, and failing to find anywhere to nap

We reached Osaka Station at 7:30 a.m. — and then things went off-plan. I was so tired that the only thought was finding somewhere to sleep for an hour, so we headed for a manga café.

They needed photo ID to register as a member, which I didn't have on me, so that was that. The branch was also in a slightly rough area and not somewhere two women particularly wanted to settle in for a while. The next idea was a sauna, but most of the ones nearby turned out to be men-only. In the end we gave up on the nap and went straight into the day.

If you're doing a day trip by overnight bus, decide in advance where you're going to sleep on arrival. Bring ID, and look up nap spots that are comfortable for women beforehand. Those two things are non-negotiable next time.

Walking Dotonbori and Namba

Fighting the tiredness, we headed for Namba and Dotonbori. This was, in fact, my first time in this part of the city.

The first surprise was the sheer number of people, on a weekday. A great many of them were visitors from overseas, from all over. It's like a festival that happens to run every day, and it gave me the odd feeling of having wandered into somewhere else entirely. I thought I was used to how busy Tokyo gets; this was another level.

You barely have to look for the landmarks. In front of the famous Glico running-man sign, everyone throws both arms up to copy the pose. At Kani Doraku, with its enormous moving crab sign, the crab buns (¥700 each) were steaming away and stopped me in my tracks. Then all the rest of it — the scenes that make Osaka the city of *kuidaore*, "eat until you drop"; a statue of Billiken, the good-luck god you see everywhere here; a queue outside Gyoza no Ohsho. So much packed into so little space that walking around is almost filling in itself.

Eating in Osaka — kushikatsu, takoyaki and mixed juice

The real point of the day was, of course, the food. In the early evening the two of us went into a kushikatsu place I'd been wanting to try. I don't drink, so we toasted with oolong tea.

First up was dote-yaki, which I'd never had — an Osaka dish of beef tendon and konjac simmered slowly in miso, meltingly soft and quietly delicious. Then the main event, kushikatsu: deep-fried skewers of pork, quail egg, asparagus, cheese, sausage, prawn, mochi and more. And the rule everyone knows about Osaka kushikatsu, no double-dipping in the sauce — a hygiene convention that exists because everyone shares the same pot of it. Knowing about a custom and actually observing it in the room are different things, and doing it made it real that I was in Osaka. For the record, I eat prawns tail and all.

To finish, takoyaki, obviously. And another first: mixed juice, which turned out to be excellent. Banana, peach, pineapple and orange blended with milk, all the fruit layering up. It's often described as emblematic of Osaka's café culture, and it was exactly the right way to end the trip.

My one regret is that I'd wanted okonomiyaki too and had no room left. Homework for next time.

The bus home — what a one-day dash actually costs you

After a thoroughly good day, we boarded the overnight bus from Umeda at 9:50 p.m. for the eight-hour run back to Tokyo. Overnight buses in both directions is, physically, quite a lot.

Honestly, a day trip like this comes with the particular strain of moving around all day without having slept. But finally standing in Dotonbori after wanting to for so long, and finding it busier and better than I'd expected, made it a very good day. Walking through a place that crowded and that far from ordinary showed me a side of Osaka I hadn't known, and I learned something from it.

In short: hard going, and worth it

Looking back on my first overnight bus in 20 years, here's where I land.

The travelling is genuinely tough. But being able to do Dotonbori and Osaka's food cheaply, in a single dash, more than compensates.

If you get travel-sick easily, or can't sleep away from your own bed, sleeping on a coach takes some resolve. For my own next attempt, I've decided on the following:

• Bring motion-sickness tablets, a neck pillow, an eye mask and earplugs to take the edge off the journey
• Bring photo ID, and decide in advance where you'll nap after arriving
• In a city with this much to eat, rank the places you want to go — stomach capacity is finite

With those in place, a day trip by overnight bus becomes a genuinely attractive option, cheap and easy to commit to. The energy of Dotonbori, and the kushikatsu, takoyaki and mixed juice, were good enough to make me forget the journey. Plan it sensibly, and go and eat your way through Osaka.

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