Umeda Ultimate Navigation Guide – JR, Hankyu, Hanshin, Osaka Metro Stations, KIX, Itami Buses 梅田紹介
Hi everyone, David here! Welcome back to
the channel! Thanks for coming back for another video, or welcome if it’s your first time, thanks
for joining us. How are you? Are you doing OK? I’m doing OK, I have just been doing some
filming in Shinsaibashi about a future video, so please stay tuned for that. I know I’ve done a
lot of Expo stuff recently, so I’m sorry if I’ve flooded the channel a little bit. I’ve just
got so much to get through, and limited time. So don’t worry, please be patient, it’s going to be
over soon. Now today I’m going to give you a bit of help if you’re visiting Umeda. Now Umeda
is the northern hub of Osaka. A lot of the train lines go through here. And that’s why
it’s sometimes called Umeda Dungeon, because it’s a little bit hard to navigate. There are
street level routes, underground routes, above ground routes – it can be a little
bit confusing. So I’m going to show you all the way around Umeda, especially between the
different stations: JR Osaka, Hanshin, Hankyu and also the Osaka Metro. I’ll show you some bus terminals to get to Kansai airport and Itami, a few little other sightseeing spots
along the way. I’ve talked about some of these before. For example Nintendo shop & the Pokémon Centre, in the Daimaru building. I did a video about that. I’ve talked about a very
large Daiso which doesn’t look very big from the street but it is very big. I’ll show you
that in the middle, that’s near Hankyu. I’ve done another video like this before about Namba,
explaining how to get around Namba and also a deeper dive into JR Osaka station. So please
check that out if you get a bit lost, that’ll show you about the exits, how to change and the different platforms. So that’s what I’m going to do today. I hope that’s useful.
So please leave a comment, like this channel, share the channel, subscribe, all that stuff.
Please leave me a Super Like if this is really useful, I appreciate that a lot, it helps me move
my channel along, onwards and upwards. By the way I’m going to narrate over some footage in a moment. I’m going to talk you through everything. In the top left corner I’m going to put the
floor we’re on as well. I’m doing this Japanese style though, so ground level is first floor or 1F.
Underground will be B1F, basement first floor. there’s basement second floor, and second floor
is above. So hopefully that’s useful for you, just to keep your bearings, where we’re going.
OK so I’m going to hand over to myself and I’ll see you on the other side.! OK let’s kick
things off at JR Osaka station and the Midosuji gate or the Midosuji exit. If you go straight
forward from here you can see the Midosuji subway entrance for the Osaka Metro. Yhere
are quite a lot of Midosuji entrances all the way around here. I’ll show you some more soon.
If you’re coming back the other way, you can use exit 9 to go up to JR.
Now let’s switch to the south exit this time. This is IC cards only, don’t go out here
with a paper ticket. But right in front of us you’ll see one of our major landmarks. Let’s
just turn around from here, this is the south exit. A few little sweet shops around here as well .
You’ll see a big bus area, so this is a big bus terminal for JR Osaka, next to that is Daimaru.
This is a big department store which plunges right through the middle of JR station. We’ll see
a few more sightings of that soon. On the other side of the bus terminal, if you go straight ahead,
there’s Hanshin department store, and also a little way down some steps, go down to a
major location. As you can see from the signs here, this is access to three of the Metro lines,
the Hanshin line and walking to JR Kitashinchi station. So coming down the steps, off to the
right you’ve got the Yotsubashi line and JR Kitashinchi. Straight ahead we’re going to see
Hanshin department store. So that’s off to the Yotsubashi line, here’s Hanshin Dept store, and
straight ahead of you is Hanshin station as well. This is Osaka Umeda on the Hanshin line. If you
carry on going around off to the back, you can see the Tanimachi line. That’s over there. And also
off towards the Hankyu line straight ahead now. We’ll go that way in a moment. Spinning around
right behind you is another Midosuji gate, so you can access the Midosuji line easily there too.
Now going ahead, like I just said is the Hankyu Dept store. Many department stores around here
You can enjoy some shopping. And carrying on going you can either turn right and go to
the Tanimachi line on the Osaka Metro or go up to these escalators. By the way the
Tanimachi line bit was going to Umeda Whity, which is a very long
shopping mall. And you’ll end up in this Hankyu Dept store plaza. which has some
nice decorations all year round. They change it quite regularly. This has quite a lot of things,
there’s a few restaurants down there in the back. There’s a nice okonomiyaki restaurant.
And straight ahead you can see three parallel tunnels which will head towards
the Hankyu station. I’ll show you in a moment. But before we do that, if we turn left from there,
you can see another way into the Midosuji Line on Osaka Metro. Or if you carry on
going straight into the sunlight, you can see JR Osaka station. This is the Midosuji gate
again, but this is the Midosuji North gate I think. OK back in the Hankyu Plaza, let’s turn
around again a little bit. If we go straight out into the sunlight here, you can see one of the
famous buildings of Umeda, we’ve got Hankyu, some stores over there, and also the HEP5
entertainment centre, with a Ferris wheel on top. So you can ride that if you like. And again
back in the plaza, this time finally we’re going to go down these parallel tunnels. So there’s a
few different ones, some of them have got a little moving walkways. And follow those through
and you’ll get to the escalators going up to Hankyu Osaka-Umeda station. This is
another train line. And this is the third floor entrance. There is a second floor one which I’ll
show you a bit later too. So the Hankyu lines give you access to Kobe, northern parts of
Hyogo and also Kyoto. This is a very useful alternative to JR. Now going down again back to
the first floor, there is a McDonald’s over there, and there’s a staircase over there. We’ll see that
in a moment. A little bit crowded but we’ll come back to that on the other side. And again from
McDonald’s, if you do a U-turn, go underneath Hankyu station, there’s some shops and things
down here. This is quite an important location. Turning left you’ll see at the Hotel Hankyu bus
terminal, which can take you to Itami airport and Kansai airport. But if we carry on going straight
you can see coin lockers and this huge plaza underneath Hankyu station as well. Now this is a
nice central location. From here you can go up you can go to the second-floor entrance of
Hankyu Osaka-Umeda station, or you can go down to the basement floor. So let’s go down there
first. Once you go down you can turn right and carry on down this tunnel and eventually you’ll
reach another Midosuji entrance. I think that’s our fourth one so far. There we go. If you
go past that entrance you can see Yodobashi Camera on one side and on the other
side there is underground access to Osaka Station City and JR station. Now if we go back
to where we were, this is still the basement floor, we’ve just come down from the Hankyu Plaza .
If you go down again into the second basement you’ll reach Hankyu Sanbangai, which is a
shopping and restaurant area underground which also connects to Umeda Whity mall.
Lots of nice restaurants around here, easy to navigate. And if you go all the way to the end,
you can go to Umeda Food Hall a big food court where you can enjoy, and find some nice seating
if you need it. They are quite strict, you need to buy some food. Back to Hankyu Plaza now. If we turn to the right, you can see daylight in the back. You can see yeah the HEP 5 building again,
and there’s a huge Daiso building. It doesn’t look very big here but it’s very large underground.
I made a video about that a few years ago. Finally back to the Hankyu Plaza one more time. Go up the escalators, you’ll enter the 2nd floor entrance to Hankyu Osaka-Umeda Station.
There are few gates there with access to the 3rd floor platforms. And do a 180, there’s a little
passageway here, let’s follow that down. There’s a little slalom around here, there’s a nice
tempura restaurant there. And a W-shaped tunnel here. Eventually you’ll get to the top
of this staircase, which is the one next to McDonald’s downstairs. Quite crowded
there, otherwise you can go over this fly-over pass. You can see JR on the left,
and on the right is Yodobashi Camera, a huge huge electronics department store. So there we
go, that’s access down to JR station. I think that’s Midosuji North, I’m not sure. Otherwise
you can go straight ahead, go along this this outdoor path, and you go past
Lucua Shopping mall. And pass through some double doors and you’ll end up
on the Atrium Plaza, which is another highlight spot of JR station. This is
the heart of Osaka Station City, so you can see access to the third floor and the first floor.
Otherwise you can carry on across, you can see Grand Front Shopping Mall in the back there .
There are a few towers of that. Ahead of that though there’s the Umekita Plaza. They often
have events here. They did a computer games event, they had ice skating in winter. But back
in the Atrium Plaza, you can go up to the 3rd floor there’s the Bridge Exit of JR. Or you can
go down to the first floor to another sub-plaza, I’m not sure what this is called but this has a few
options too. You can go straight ahead to the Chuo Gate of JR Osaka. Or you can do a 180,
do a U-turn and go straight ahead and you can get to the JR bus terminal. The bus terminal
has JR West’s buses, and you can catch them all down here. It’s very organized and there’s a
ticket office down there too. If you keep going all the way to the end, you’ll pop out into daylight
and you can also see the Kitte area, Grand Green Osaka’s area, I’ll go back soon. Now back in that
sub-plaza, you can also turn left instead of doing a 180. That underpass will take you also
to JR in the direction of Hankyu. And going straight ahead instead will take you to the Osaka
Chuo Gate, the central gate. It will also has access to the ticket reservation areas. There are
some vending machines, there’s some manned offices there too. And you can also
do things like change money, you can change your JR pass there as well. If you keep going all
the way through, you can get back to Daimaru, which we saw at the start. This is the first
floor entrance. Now this is the Sakurabashi gate of JR, that’s not too far away. And there’s also
another bus terminal for non-JR buses, like Nankai bus for example. Fairly close to this
is also the Osaka station West Gate, a fairly new extension. And right opposite that is the
Kitte shopping mall and restaurant area. This is a fairly new building, it was only opened in 2024.
But I think six or seven floors of food and shops and entertainment, that’s nice, check that
out. And if you go through the West Gate, all the way to the other side, you can see the escalator
up to Inogate Osaka again. More restaurants and shops, mostly restaurants. You can keep going,
there’s a kind of very lengthy overpass going past the back of Lucua Osaka Station City, and going
towards the new area Grand Green Osaka and Umekita Park. There’s a little concert venue
I think here, with some shops and cafes. You can walk around to Grand Green Osaka,
a new building. Or just enjoy the sunshine and the fountains. A little bit too hot, not very
shady, but a nice little park around there. In the background is the Umeda Sky Building,
you can get some lovely views at night. Now let’s go back to Osaka Station City, the Atrium Plaza,
go up to the third floor, the Bridge Gate of JR Osaka is over there. But that doesn’t stop,
you can keep going up to the fifth floor. I don’t believe there’s a fourth floor,
it just kind of skips one. And you’ll find the Toki Plaza. I think that’s what it’s called ,
a nice high level, very windy plaza where there’s some nice places to sit. There’s some
temporary exhibits, this inflatable thing. I think this is tied into the Expo somehow.
And yeah whatever the hell this thing is there, temporarily I think too. And it doesn’t stop there,
Osaka Station City keeps going up and up. So you can see shops all around, cafes on that
little overpass as well. We’re going to keep going up, we’re going to go up to the seventh floor,
I think. There’s the next one, get some nice views down of Osaka Station as well. So theres some
more access to Lucua’s shopping buildings. You can keep going up. I think this is to the
maybe 10th or 11th floor. There’s some nice sky gardens, there’s a little stone garden
over there. And also the Kaze no Hiroba. I think this is the 12th floor, so you can rest over there
and get some fresh air. There’s even a vegetable garden on the top if you keep going up.
Some lovely views of the new area of Umeda, North area and the Umeda Sky Building.
Thank you for watching all of that, and I’ll give you some more information next. Welcome
back, thanks for watching all the way to the end. I hope that made some sort of sense anyway.
I tried to do it in a fairly logical order so you can just follow the routes around.
But generally speaking Umeda has kind of a triangle of train stations: JR Osaka, Hanshin,
to the north, and then Hankyu, which is to the south I think. And of course
the Osaka Metro which goes underneath the whole thing. So that’s all over the place.
You saw the Midosuji line has so many entrances that’s a very long platform. So OK, I would say
if you need to get around the Kansai area, I think generally speaking JR is your best bet.
You can get to all sorts of corners of Osaka. Except its weak spot is the middle
of Osaka city. There is a Loop line that goes all the way around, and there
are lines that go here and there in other parts of the city. But actually getting
inside the loop line is kind of hard to get to, and especially Namba is bit of a pain to get to.
The loop line goes from Umeda all the way to Tennoji which is further south than Namba.
So if you want to travel inside Osaka city then the Metro is probably your best bet. That’s very inter-
connected, you can go pretty much everywhere. I showed you Hanshin as well, that is a slightly
more reasonable version of the Hankyu line. That goes from Umeda to Kobe, it goes all
the way down there, and it hooks up with the Sanyo railway as well, which takes you
further into Hyogo Prefecture. The Hanshin line’s not very long. If you go to Amagasaki
there’s actually a branch line that goes down to Namba, so that’s another way to get there. The
Hanshin Namba Line also shares with Kintetsu which will take you all the way to Nara, so you
might be able to take a quite a nice shortcut from from Osaka to Nara via Amagasaki. It’s a
bit of a strange route but this can be done. Hankyu is also one of the big ones, that also
goes to Kobe and serves northern Hyogo Prefecture. It can also go to Kyoto.
Personally I don’t really like JR Kyoto Station. It’s a nice station but it’s not super convenient
for sightseeing. It does hook up to the Kyoto metro, but if you want to get right
into the thick of the action, Hankyu will take you straight into Kawaramachi which is
a very downtown area and really nice. Next to the river, and it’s a nice spot for sightseeing.
So Hankyu might be good for that if you’re staying around Umeda. I showed you
the buses as well, so you can take a bus from Hankyu bus terminal to Kansai airport and Itami
airport. I’ve made videos about Kansai airport and Itami. Of course Kansai is an international
and domestic airport but Itami I think is only domestic at the moment.
So you can get to other parts of Japan. What else? There are some other bus terminals,
I showed you those, some new areas too like the Kitte building and Grand Green Osaka and
Umekita Park. That’s all nice and new, so go check those out soon. OK I think that’s most
of the stuff. I didn’t talk about the Shinkansen at all for a very good reason – it doesn’t
go through Osaka station at all. It goes through Shin-Osaka which is a little bit
further to the north. That’s easy to get to by Osaka Metro Midosuji line, that goes up there.
Or you could also take a train from JR Osaka; there are several trains that go very regularly.
I think it’s only one station north from Osaka. So Shin-Osaka, that’s where you get the
Shinkansen tickets. Sorry, that’s where you catch the Shinkansen. You can get the tickets there of
course but also any of those green window stations in JR. You can make reservations
for the Shinkansen. So you saw that at the JR Osaka Chuo, the Central gate. Near there
there’s a green window ticket booking place. So yeah OK, well I hope that was useful!
I hope you can understand Umeda a little bit more. Like I said, I made a video about Namba
already, so please check that out if you’re staying in Namba. Let me know if there any other areas
of Osaka that need explaining, because some of them can be a bit of a tangle. So let me know
in the comments, please like this video, please share the channel, leave a comment
or question and subscribe. I’ll be doing more stuff like this in amongst
the Expo stuff. I promise the Expo stuff will start cooling down at some point in the next
month or two, because I’m going to run out of stuff to talk about! So thank you for watching
and take care, and see you again! Bye-bye
A complete guide to, and walk around Umeda’s various train stations, starting from the JR Osaka, linking to Hankyu, Hanshin and Osaka Metro stations.
Umeda can be a bit daunting for new visitors, with no less than 4 train companies operating there, and 3 Osaka Metro lines passing through. It’s even known as the Umeda Dungeon, with even Osaka locals getting confused by the labyrinthine underground tunnels, street-level paths and overpasses.
It’s well worth the visit for restaurants, bars, street food, shopping, and plenty of interesting spots if you know where to look!
I’ve tried to cover as much as I can, but if you have more questions, please let me know in the comments.
Thanks for 1000 subscribers, please help me get to 2000 by subscribing if you haven’t already, I really hope you can press “Like”, leave a comment or request, and press the Bell icon to get notifications! Or share this video if you enjoyed it, I need your help!
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