How to use JR Osaka Station – Exits in Umeda, Transferring to Kyoto, Shin-Osaka, Kobe 大阪駅説明

A complete guide to JR Osaka Station, the 3rd busiest station in Japan.

JR Osaka Station can be a bit daunting for visitors, as the central hub for Kansai travel. So I’ll show you the various exits and where you can go when you arrive, including onward travel on Hankyu, Osaka Metro and Hanshin lines. I’ll also show you the various platforms you can use to visit Kyoto, Kobe, Shin-Osaka, Kansai Airport, Wakayama, Hokuriku and more.

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 650 subscribers, please help me get to 700 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!

#JRosaka #osakastation #traveladvice #japan #itamiairport #kansai #itm #osaka #travelinjapan #osaka #kyoto #nara #kobe #sightseeing #touristinformation #jrwest #JR #osakametro #hankyu #hanshin #trains #japanesetrains #kansaiairport #kix
#大阪駅 #空港空港 #伊丹 #空港 #大阪 #観光 #関西空港 #大阪メトロ #阪急 #阪神 #日本電車 #京都 #奈良 #神戸 #関西
——

Background Music by Bensound.com
Intro music by Coyote Kisses

Hi everyone, David here. Welcome back to the channel! Thanks for coming back for another video, or welcome if it’s your first one. I hope you’re doing OK. I’m doing fine, it’s a nice relaxing Sunday today so I’m taking it easy.

I’ve already taken all the footage for today’s video, so I’m feeling a bit more comfortable. So in today’s video, I wanted to continue in the vein of public information tourist advice videos, because they seem to be in demand a

Little bit now. So recently I did “How to get around in Osaka”, the different train lines. I did one recently about “How to buy a ticket”, that seems to have done quite well. Of course my “Best 50 places to visit in Osaka”, definitely check

That out, it’s my crown jewel. But today I want to show you how to get around JR Osaka station and where you can go from there, and which trains you need to take, which platforms and so on. JR Osaka station is located in Umeda,

Which is the kind of northern downtown part. And it’s kind of the… well this is the central Station for Osaka. As you might know if you saw that other video, there are a lot of train lines around in Osaka, and other places in Japan.

But JR is the main one that goes all over Japan, and so JR Osaka station is the big one. I think I read it’s the third most-used station in Japan, so it has millions of users every day. It probably puts it

On the world ranking somewhere too because trains are very popular in Japan. A lot of commuters use those, but it’s a little bit complicated. I’m going to show you around which platforms you can use to go to various places.

If you want to go to Kyoto, or Kobe, or even to Shin-Osaka to catch the Shinkansen, I’ll show you where to go. And if you just want to go around Osaka I’ll show you about the Loop Line as well, where to get on board.

So be careful the Shinkansen doesn’t come from JR Osaka Station it goes from Shin-Osaka Station, which… I’m going to show you how to get there too. It’s just one station away. But yeah the Shinkansen Line is fairly new compared to

The rest of the network, so they couldn’t just drive it right through the middle of Umeda. So they had to put it a little bit further north where it’s a bit less populated and they can design a new station from scratch.

I’ll talk about that, I’ll talk about the different exits – where you can go from there and hopefully that’s useful. If you have any questions about it, of course leave a comment about that. You can like the video too,

That will help me a lot. Subscribe to the channel, share the video to other people who are visiting, and of course leave a comment, that would help me a lot. And I like to read the comments anyway, so I’m waiting for that!

I’m going to do a montage video thing with my narration, so I’m going to pass over to myself in a moment and… yeah guess that’s it! So I’ll see you on the other side! OK here we are in JR Osaka Station.

You can see we’re right in the middle here because I want to show you the Chuo Gate. Chuo means Central, so this is the Central gate. This is the biggest gate, I think, in the station and has access to a lot of the downtown stuff.

So first of all, there’s the big ticket area. So you can buy your reserve tickets and Shinkansen tickets, things like that. There is quite a long line for this though so brace yourself. Otherwise you can use the machines which are just around the corner, and they do have English options. There’s also tourist

Information, and if you’re getting your JR pass you can pick that up over there too, as well as other passes and currency exchange. There are coin lockers all over the station so don’t worry too much with your giant bags, and also ATMs and toilets down there too. There’s also places to buy souvenirs,

There’s a nice souvenir shop there, you can buy some Kobe Pudding. And some restaurants too, there’s an Italian restaurant, Japanese-Italian. Now if you go south from there, this is a South Central Exit. Off the Central Gate you can see some Osaka Station memorabilia and also the basement exit to the Daimaru department store.

You can go there for the Pokémon Centre. And also access to the South Gate Building. This is where the Nintendo Shop and things like that are. Now a bit further north is the Sakurabashi Exit. This is on the on the

West side. It’s not used that much really, but again more coin lockers and also it does have access to — you can see there the northwest corner of Osaka Station. And it has access to other lines like the Hanshin line, the Yotsubashi

Subway line, and also JR Kitashinchi, which is quite close but it’s not on the Loop Line. And it’s also close to the Herbis Plaza. If you want to see a concert or the Gekidanshiki theatre troupe. Now the West Gate, I don’t think most

People know about this. This is kind of in the far north corner. This is where the Limited Express new platform is. There’s a rather misleading dragon map there, for some anniversary. It’s the Year of the Dragon here.

Yeah, it’s a bit of a sleepy area really. You don’t really need to use the West Gate unless you’re using the Limited Expresses. We’re going back south along this western edge to go back into Osaka Station, past the Central Exit, and you

Can get to the South Gate, as you can imagine, in the south. This is quite convenient for me. I use this one to go to work. It’s right next to the Osaka City Bus Terminal, with Daimaru again on the

Ground floor, or the first floor, we say here. And the Hanshin department store over there, and the Hanshin line is over there too. If you go a bit further south you can reach the Midosuji Gate. And this is so named because it is the closest one

To the Midosuji Line, this is the Osaka Metro subway line. There’s an escalator down there, it takes you into Umeda station, so that’s quite convenient if you’re transferring from the Metro system. There’s also the green reserved ticket machines there too, there’s no office for this though.

And if you go out of the Midosuji South exit – this is on the west side – you can have a nice view, you can do your people-watching, take your Instagram inspirational things, and you can go to Hankyu department store as well.

It’s another big department store in the area. And you get a nice view really of the kind of downtown area. There’s Hanshin over there, and you get a bit of a view of JR Osaka with that huge roof.

Now, next to the Midosuji gate there are a few cafes and shops as wel, so you can go and relax there if you’ve had a long trip. Or you can take a take a left go out of the Midosuji North Exit. And there’s an escalator up here

Which will take you to kind of a flyover bridge thing that connects directly to Yodobashi Camera, the big electronics department store. Also the Links Building has a lot of shops and restaurants, definitely a lot of places to eat there. And looking across you can also get to Hankyu Umeda Station,

Which is the Hankyu line. And there’s also a bus station underneath, which will go to Kansai Airport. Now this kind of flyover bridge plaza, it has a special Starbucks which specializes in tea, it’s got a nice little clock tower thing and

Even some flowers there decorating the place. It’s got some tulips here, all yellow except for that little half one in the middle, a little bit strange! Now this flyover bridge thing, if you go in the other direction, this takes you to the northern part of it. This is the

Central Gate again, you can walk along there. You can walk underground as well, this is this little tunnel route there, going alongside the Lucua department store. So you can go up there, you can go up to the big plaza at the top, or you can stay around here. There’s a new state-of-the-art

Advertising screen here, not quite as nice as the 3D one in Shinjuku, but whatever. And also access to the JR Bus Terminal, which is newly refurbished and underground. So if you’re going to take buses onto Shikoku or Kyushu or

Kanto you can do that. Now, if you go up the escalator to the second floor from from the Chuo Gate, you can go to Osaka Station City. Loads and loads of shops and restaurants around here. You can continue going up, there’s another gate

Up there, I’ll talk about that soon. And then another branch of Lucua. But from this plaza you can also see the Grand Front Osaka. Again, it’s another big shopping mall. There’s two buildings of that, and looking down you can see the

Umekita Plaza which is the North Umeda area. It’s got an ice rink there in the winter. And if you look a bit further in the background, there is also the Umeda Sky Building. A very nice sightseeing spot, you can go right to the top and have a nice

View of the river. OK one of the new terminals now is the Umekita Underground Gate Very state of the art, it only opened last year in 2023. They’ve even got a facial recognition gate which I haven’t tried yet, I need to set it up and register my face somehow.

But that’s the future, the future’s now! Now it’s a little bit far from the main building, it’s a bit of an annex building. So there’s a kind of liminal space in between them, but if you go down this long tunnel you can get to the Umekita underground restaurant area.

So there’s lots of fancy cafes and a few nice shops there too. OK now, going up to the third floor above the Chuo Gate is the Bridge Gate. This is quite a convenient one too, because all the platforms are very easily accessible. I find this easier for transferring if you’re going between platforms.

You’ve also got access to the South Gate Building on the third floor, so again Daimaru and Pokémon Centre, Nintendo store, all that stuff. And also if you go up even further to the fifth floor, there’s the Toki no Hiroba Plaza.

You can have a nice restful and slightly windy break, there are some places to sit, there’s a little cafe there too and you’ve got some nice views, aerial views of Osaka Station. So you can look down and see all of the trains leaving.

Nice for the train geeks! Yeah it’s quite a nice area so just take a rest there if you want to. You can even go up, further up to the roof. There’s a cinema up there. There are more restaurants, there’s even a little

Flower garden. Now let’s take a look at some of the platform. So there’s Platform 11 which is accessible from the Bridge Gate. This takes care of most of the Limited Express trains, for example the Thunderbird which goes to Kanazawa in the Hokuriku area, and also has connections to the Hokuriku Shinkansen.

On 9 and 10, this is kind of an Express platform only. It’s not really that busy, except in the mornings and evenings. But this will take you to Shin-Osaka and further north to Kyoto. I wanted to show you what the displays look like on the platforms. So you can see there’s an

Arrow on either side, saying which platform the train’s going to come from. Some of these are not, they’re just stopping, they’re not picking up passengers. But you see that triangle there? A triangle and cars 1 – 12? That means those are the boarding locations. So you can see a white triangle there.

If you want to get that train you should queue up there. The number 4 means the car number, so you’re kind of in the middle of the train. OK platform 7 and 8. Aalso this is a bit busier, this takes you on

The Kyoto line. You can use this to go to Shin-Osaka station for the Shinkansen, or onwards to Kyoto. Obviously that’s a very popular route, so this is a very crowded platform. You can see some different symbols there – they’ve got an arrow,

They’ve got a circle, they’ve got a transfer to a different line. So this is a circle exit, you can get on there. And the priority seats – if you see the sign, don’t use those seats unless it’s totally empty. And if you have a big

Suitcase, that does NOT count as priority! So please be careful. Now platforms 5 and 6 take care of the Kobe and Takarazuka lines. This is the main line to go to Kobe. Kobe station is not the main station actually, Sannomiya is, so go to Sannomiya.

Most of the platforms have vending machines too, so you can get hot and cold drinks here. Do you see the red and blue ones for different colours? Some stations have a little kiosk, JR Kyoto Station even has a little noodle shop as well,

Right on the platform. And another Kobe line & Takarazuka line platform is 3 and 4. So you can take these to various places. There’s a few Limited Express ones that leave from here – like the Kounotori which goes to Kinosaki Onsen.

Finally platforms 1 and 2. They are the Loop Line: the Uchimawari and the Sotomawari, the inner and outer Loop Lines. So platform 1 goes anticlockwise, platform 2 goes clockwise, so make sure you know which route is better for you. This is definitely one of the most crowded platforms.

There are regular trains leaving from these platforms every 5 minutes or so, or even more often than that. Sometimes it gets very crowded, especially when the trains get delayed, which is hopefully rarely. And they’ve also got these fancy sliding security doors to stop people jumping out on

The platforms, that’s for your safety, so please be careful. Now the markings here a little bit complicated for the inner line. We’ve got the red one for the Loop Line, the green one for Nara – that’s why there’s a little deer picture. The yellow part, this the exit and so please

Keep that clear for people getting off the trains. The blue one goes to Kansai Airport and the Wakayama area, so that’s why there’s a plane. And one more for the Loop Line, so make sure you know where to stand.

And in the west area, the West Gate and the Umekita Gate, we can see these platforms, the new Limited Express platform. These ones go to Kansai Airport and Wakayama. And this is the north-facing part which doesn’t really go to those places, it’s kind of the tail end of the routes.

So as you can see, you can take the Limited Express Haruka for Kansai Airport. Also you can take the Limited Express Kuroshio for Wakayama and Shirahama. Shirahama is a nice beach resort. And also the Osaka Higashi Line, which I’ve never used, I didn’t even know that existed! The platforms are quite swish,

They are very nice and new, they’re using dynamic LED information screens in multiple languages, so that’s very useful for the tourists to get around. And also some restful pictures of satsumas if you’re feeling a bit stressed out by these big stations. But that’s enough from me, so I’m going to

Get onto the Loop Line and go home, so there we go, I hope that was useful and I’ll hand over to myself, thank you! Hi, welcome back, thanks for watching all the way to the end. I hope that was

Useful, I hope that gave you a fairly comprehensive view of JR Osaka. It took me about 2 hours walking around. It surprised me how big the station is! It looks a bit complicated but it’s quite easy to get around, the signposting is pretty good. Just be grateful you’re not in JR Kyoto Station,

Because that’s a lot more complicated I think. Well at least for me who doesn’t really go there very much. I did touch on this briefly in the video but I said JR Osaka the big station for Umeda, but there are connections to other lines too. So there’s the Hankyu line which is just

Across that flyover bridge. That’s good for going to Kobe and other kind of parts of Hyogo prefecture, and also Itami Airport, that’s an important one. There’s the Hanshin line as well, which runs broadly in the same way towards Kobe and beyond. That does share with a

Few other lines too so you can use the Hanshin line to get onto the Kintetsu line to the east and the Sanyo Dentetsu in the west. So that’s kind of useful. I don’t use a Hanshin very much. And of course the Osaka Metro that’s —

If you’re going to somewhere that’s not on the loop line, the Metro is probably the best way to go there. It’s a very dense network of subway lines so that is right there. When I talked about the Midosuji Gate, that’s where the

Metro is – Midosuji being the Midosuji Line, which is the main north-south route. I think I’ll probably make a video about the Osaka Metro in the future, but not today! Yeah I think that’s about it, so if you have

Any questions about Osaka station or how to travel around in Japan, let me know in the comments. As always, like, subscribe, share this video if you know anyone interested in Japanese train stations or traveling in Japan. And also leave a

Comment, I’d be happy to read those! So I hope that was fun and see you again for the next video! Take care, have a nice day, bye bye!