You come up the steps at Namba and the noise arrives before the view does – the canal, the bridge, and then a wall of light so dense that for a second you cannot find anything to look at first. Six storeys of signage on both banks, a mechanical crab the size of a car waving its legs over a doorway, a pufferfish, a dragon, a man with a drum, and in the middle of it all a running athlete with his arms up, blue track and a city skyline behind him.

That man is about to disappear. At midnight on 30 November 2026 the Glico sign switches off, and this time it is not a refresh – the whole thing comes down and a seventh-generation sign goes up in its place, due in spring 2027. The hoarding goes up almost immediately. When they did this in 2014 they printed a stand-in runner on the cover, which was charming and not at all the same thing.

Why the sign matters more than it should

Glico has had a runner on this corner since 1935 – six versions of him, through the war, through the rebuilding, through the city changing completely around him. He is not advertising so much as a civic fixture, which is why the bridge in front of him is permanently full of people doing the pose with both arms in the air, and why nobody in Osaka finds that embarrassing. It is the one place in Japan where everybody, visitors and locals alike, behaves like a tourist on purpose.

Go twice, at two different hours

At nine at night it is overwhelming in the best way – the signs reflected in the black canal, the crowd five deep on Ebisubashi, the smell of batter and sauce from every doorway. Then go back at seven the next morning. The signs are off, the canal is grey-green and perfectly still, a man is hosing down the pavement outside a takoyaki shop, and you can finally see that there is a real city underneath all of it. The second visit is the one that stays with me.

What to eat while you are standing there

Takoyaki, first, from a stall with a queue of Japanese people rather than a photograph of the food outside. Let it sit for a minute – the inside is molten and everyone burns their mouth once. Then okonomiyaki, sitting down. Then, one street back from the canal, duck into Hozenji Yokocho – a stone alley with lanterns and a moss-covered Buddha that people ladle water over for luck – and have a drink somewhere tiny. Thirty seconds from the neon and four hundred years away from it.

What I would tell you to do about the date

If Osaka was on the list for next year, move it. Five weeks of this sign are left, this autumn is the best weather of the year here, and the alternative is a construction hoarding until spring. And if you cannot go before the end of November, then go in late 2027 and see the new one lit for the first time – that will be its own event, and the bridge will be extraordinary that night.

If you would like me to build a Kansai trip around it – Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, and the tables that actually need booking – tell me here and I will start with the restaurants.