Tsuruhashi (鶴橋), Osaka

Tsuruhashi is Osaka's Korean town, one of the most distinctively international neighborhoods in Japan and home to the largest Korean community in the country. It sits in Higashinariwari Ward east of the city center, built around a dense network of covered market arcades that are unlike anything else in Osaka and arguably in Japan.

The Korean community in Tsuruhashi has its roots in the colonial period when large numbers of Koreans came to Osaka as workers during Japanese rule of the Korean peninsula in the early twentieth century. After the war the community remained and built the market networks and community infrastructure that define the neighborhood today. The result is a place that has maintained a distinct cultural identity for over 80 years and feels genuinely unlike any other neighborhood in Japan.

The covered market arcades of Tsuruhashi are the neighborhood's defining physical feature. Extending in multiple directions from the station, they are dense, narrow, and filled with Korean food vendors, Japanese butcher shops, kimchi stalls, dried seafood, and the general commercial vitality of a market district that serves a community rather than a tourist circuit.

How to Get to Tsuruhashi

Tsuruhashi Station is served by the JR Osaka Loop Line and the Osaka Metro Sennichimae Line. Kintetsu Tsuruhashi Station, adjacent to the main station, serves the Kintetsu Osaka Line connecting to Nara and Kyoto.