Janjan-Yokocho (Nanyo-dori Shopping Street)

This guide to Janjan Yokocho in Osaka walks the narrow covered alley named for the racket of a shamisen once strummed to pull customers in, and the night-shift workers and day laborers who rebuilt postwar Osaka and never left. It follows the old men still bent over shogi boards in the lane's game parlors, and Osaka's claim to one of the game's greatest champions. The kushikatsu counters here run on one unbending house rule about the shared dipping sauce, best learned by watching the regulars first.