Osaka Trivia
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48 free Osaka trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Osaka trivia quiz covers Japan's great merchant city, from its days as the imperial capital of Naniwa and the port of the Kofun kings, through Toyotomi Hideyoshi's gold-leafed castle and the siege that ended the Toyotomi clan, to the industrial boom of the Meiji era, the B-29 raids of 1945 and the postwar rise that brought Expo '70, the Kaiyukan aquarium, Kansai International Airport and Universal Studios Japan. There is plenty on the Osaka everyone visits today: the Glico Man and crab signs of Dōtonbori, takoyaki and okonomiyaki, the kuidaore proverb, Tsūtenkaku and its Billiken, Shitennō-ji, Sumiyoshi Taisha, the Tenjin Matsuri, Abeno Harukas, the Umeda Sky Building, bunraku puppet theatre, the Hanshin Tigers and their Curse of the Colonel, and the Yumeshima island of Expo 2025. Some questions are simple for anyone who has walked Namba at night; others will challenge long-time residents. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city and its landmarks, and each explanation adds one further fact. Ideal for travellers, Japanophiles and Kansai natives.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Only Tokyo and which other city have more residents than Osaka?
Yokohama
Yokohama, Tokyo's neighbour, is the larger city today, yet in 1925 Osaka was the most populous city in Japan and the sixth largest in the world.
Q 02What do the kanji in the name Ōsaka literally mean?
Large slope
Large slope is the literal reading; the second kanji can also mean hill. A popular story says the old 'slope' character was dropped in the Meiji era because its halves could be read as 'samurai rebel'.
Q 03By what ancient name was Osaka known when Emperor Kōtoku made it Japan's capital in 645?
Naniwa
Naniwa's palace was lost for centuries until archaeologist Tokutarō Yamane unearthed its foundations just south of Osaka Castle, confirming the site in 1961.
Q 04Which warlord built Osaka Castle in 1583 on the site of a razed Buddhist fortress-temple?
Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Toyotomi Hideyoshi modelled the castle on Azuchi, the seat of his late master Oda Nobunaga, who had spent ten years besieging the fortress-temple that once stood on the site.
Q 05How was the outside of Osaka Castle's original 1580s main tower decorated to impress visitors?
With gold leaf
With gold leaf on its tiles and ornaments, the tower flaunted its builder's taste for gilding: he also owned a portable tea room covered in gold, carried from castle to castle.
Q 06After the truce that ended the 1614 winter siege, Osaka Castle lost which defence?
The moats
The moats were filled in, the outer one first and then the inner; in the traditional account Ieyasu's men went well beyond what the truce allowed. Stripped bare, the castle fell in summer 1615.
Q 07The main keep of Osaka Castle built in 1931 is made of what?
Ferroconcrete
Ferroconcrete gave Osaka its first main tower in 266 years: lightning had burned the last one in 1665, and citizens' donations paid for the 1931 rebuild.
Q 08On 14 August 1945, the day before Japan's surrender, American bombers wrecked what facility beside Osaka Castle?
A military arsenal
A military arsenal filled the castle grounds, and the raid killed 382 workers there. The rebuilt castle tower beside it was damaged but came through the raids still standing.
Q 09Edo-period Osaka was nicknamed 'the nation's kitchen' because it was Japan's main market for which commodity?
Rice
Rice paid as tax by the feudal domains was shipped to Osaka's warehouses, and in 1730 the shogunate licensed the Dōjima exchange there to trade rice futures, a forerunner of modern futures markets.
Q 10Which two electronics giants have their headquarters in Osaka Prefecture?
Panasonic and Sharp
Panasonic and Sharp are both Osaka firms, but Sharp made its name in Tokyo with a mechanical pencil and moved west only after the 1923 Kantō earthquake destroyed its factories.
Q 11An old saying holds that Kyotoites ruin themselves on clothing while Osakans ruin themselves on what?
Food
Food ruins Osakans in the saying, whose word kuidaore means eating yourself broke; the city wears it proudly, and a drumming mechanical clown named Kuidaore Taro has greeted Dōtonbori crowds since the 1950s.
Q 12At Osaka's kushikatsu counters, what are diners famously forbidden to do?
Dip twice
Dip twice and you break the rule these fried-skewer shops are famous for, since every diner shares the same pot of sauce; the dish grew up in the cheap bars of Shinsekai, the old amusement quarter.
Q 13What is the main filling of takoyaki?
Octopus
Octopus went in when Osaka street vendor Tomekichi Endo, credited with inventing the snack in 1935, swapped it for the beef in his earlier radioyaki, borrowing the idea from the octopus dumplings of nearby Akashi.
Q 21Which imperial prince commissioned Shitennō-ji, sometimes called Japan's first Buddhist temple?
Shōtoku
Shōtoku brought temple carpenters over from Korea to build it, and one of them founded Kongō Gumi, the Osaka builder that stayed a family firm for more than 1,400 years until a 2006 takeover.
Q 22Osaka's ancient Sumiyoshi Taisha gives its name to what, older than Buddhism's arrival in Japan?
A style of shrine architecture
A style of shrine architecture, sumiyoshi-zukuri, keeps its roofs straight, not curved; its gods guard sailors, for the shrine once faced the sea.
Q 23The Tenjin Matsuri, one of Japan's three great festivals, honours which scholar, now worshipped as the god of learning?
Q 14The name of okonomiyaki, the savoury pancake with two rival regional styles, means roughly what?
Grilled how you like it
Grilled how you like it suits a dish with no fixed recipe: okonomi means 'to your liking', and in many Osaka restaurants diners mix the batter and fry their own on a griddle set into the table.
Q 15The giant Dōtonbori billboard of a runner crossing a finish line advertises which confectionery company?
Glico
Glico is short for glycogen, which founder Riichi Ezaki took from oyster broth for a caramel whose box showed a runner with arms raised in victory; the sign has lit Dōtonbori since 1935.
Q 16Dōtonbori was historically what kind of quarter before becoming a nightlife area?
A theatre district
A theatre district from the 1620s, the canal bank was lined with kabuki and puppet playhouses; the teahouses and restaurants that served their crowds grew into today's eating street.
Q 17Which fast-food mascot statue did Hanshin fans throw into the Dōtonbori canal in 1985, supposedly cursing the team?
Colonel Sanders
Colonel Sanders stood in for the team's bearded American slugger Randy Bass when celebrating fans could find no lookalike; divers hauled the statue out of the canal in 2009, minus its glasses and left hand.
Q 18The 'Hanshin' of the Hanshin Tigers pairs a character from Osaka's name with one from which port city to its west?
Kobe
Kobe supplies the 'shin': Hanshin is the railway linking the two cities, and its Tigers dropped 'Osaka' from their name in 1961 because their Kōshien ballpark sits between them, outside Osaka Prefecture.
Q 19Osaka's Tsūtenkaku tower was modelled on which foreign landmark?
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower was copied for the top half of the 1912 original, set on a base shaped like the Arc de Triomphe; that tower was pulled down after a 1943 fire, and its 1956 successor glows with Hitachi advertising.
Q 20Which American charm doll, 'God of Things as They Ought to Be', has feet that Tsūtenkaku visitors rub for luck?
Billiken
Billiken was patented in 1908 by Missouri art teacher Florence Pretz and reached Osaka within a few years; the tower's original statue vanished in the 1920s, and an American university still has him as its mascot.
Sugawara no Michizane
Sugawara no Michizane's spirit leaves Osaka Tenmangū in a gilded portable shrine each 25 July and is paraded on a fleet of river boats under fireworks before being carried home.
Q 24In bunraku, Osaka's puppet theatre, who usually voices every character?
A single chanter
A single chanter, seated beside the shamisen player, voices men, women and children alike, while three operators dressed in black work each main puppet in full view of the audience.
Q 25Which avant-garde artist created the Tower of the Sun, the many-faced symbol of Expo '70 near Osaka?
Tarō Okamoto
Tarō Okamoto made his 70-metre tower burst through the fair's Big Roof, designed by Kenzō Tange; its golden mask looks to the future, the front face is the present and the black sun on its back is the past.
Q 26Expo '70 near Osaka drew 64 million visitors, a world's fair record that stood for 40 years until which city's Expo?
Shanghai
Shanghai passed it with 73 million visitors in 2010. Osaka's fair, the first held in Asia, also buried a time capsule meant to stay sealed for 5,000 years, until 6970.
Q 27Expo 2025 was held on which artificial island in Osaka Bay, whose name means 'dream island'?
Yumeshima
Yumeshima began as a waste landfill in the bay; private cars were kept off it during the Expo, and the Metro's Chūō Line was extended out to the island to carry the crowds.
Q 28Expo 2025's Grand Ring, two kilometres around the Osaka site, holds a Guinness record as the largest structure made of what?
Wood
Wood, mostly Japanese cedar and cypress, was fitted together by architect Sou Fujimoto with traditional Japanese joinery; he called the ring a sign that a divided world can still connect.
Q 29What was the name of Expo 2025's red-and-blue mascot?
Myaku-Myaku
Myaku-Myaku is officially a creature born of red cells and blue water that shifts shape and merely mimics a human; its name doubles a word for pulse to mean something handed down without a break.
Q 30Osaka's main international airport, opened in 1994, is built where?
On a man-made island in the bay
On a man-made island in the bay, the airport sank into the soft seabed far faster than planned, so hydraulic jacks under the terminal's columns lift it back to level.