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What one actually finds in Shinsekai is perhaps a mix of truth and hype. It does have some seedy charcters milling about especially at night. Many homeless wander through the area as Shinsekai sits pretty much in the middle of the Osaka's most destitute area. The neighbourhood is also home to Osaka's transvestites community, which if anything adds to the interesting flavour of the neighbourhood.
If you enter the neighbourhood in the day time, especially on the weekend, you can get a good idea in a short time what the area is all about. Cheap restraunts, bad albeit cheap clothing stores, a few seedy cinemas, clubs for older fellas who play a sort of board game called sho-gi,and of course pachinko and porno.
Shinsekai has a few fugu (blow fish) restraunts but the neigbourhood's real culinery forte is kushi-kutsu . The neighbourhood abounds with cramped kushi-kutsu restraunts offering various kinds of meat, fish and vegetables all breaded and deep fried on small sticks for around 100 yen each. Greasy but quite tasty!
Shinsekai sits next to the Tennoji Zoo , Museum and Garden to the east, 500 yen. To the south is Spa World and Festival Gate. The former is a slightly pricey (2,700 yen) spa featuring kitchy spa rooms said to resemble real spas from around the world. It is a great place to relax or lay out if you miss the last train as it is open all night, but perhaps less great in intimating authentic spa experiances from around the world. Festival Gate is a failed attmept to create a compact amusement park right smack in the middle of Osaka's most run down part of town. Instead of trying to blend the park into Shinsekai its construction pretty much resulted in barricading it from its surrounding neigborhood. Very sad, and very bankrupt, it is slated to close before the close of 2004. And of course, the Tsutenkaku Tower, 600 Yen to the top, does provide a good panoramic and unobstructed view of Osaka.
Shinsekai is accesible by JR Shin Imamiya station and Dobutsenmae station on the Mido-suji (red line) subway to the south and Ebischuo station on the Sakai-suji (brown line, exit 3) to the north. It is also the final stop at the north end of the Hankai street car line .