In September 2025, Time Out published its annual ranking of the world's coolest neighborhoods. Nakatsu came in at number eight.
For the expat community in Osaka, this was less a revelation than a confirmation. Those who had been living in or around this compact pocket of northern Osaka already knew what the ranking was recognizing: a neighborhood that had quietly built something rare — a genuine local identity that didn't depend on tourists, didn't rely on a single gimmick, and rewarded the people who actually lived there rather than the ones who were just passing through.
Since that ranking, search interest in Nakatsu has risen sharply. And with it, the questions: What is it actually like to live there? What does the rental market look like for foreigners? How does it compare to Nakazakicho next door? Is it as accessible as it looks?
This guide answers those questions honestly — from the ground up.
Nakatsu (中津) sits in Kita-ku, the northern ward of Osaka, immediately west of Nakazakicho and a ten-minute walk from the vast transport and commercial hub of Umeda. It is served by Nakatsu Station on both the Midosuji Line — Osaka's primary north-south subway artery — and the Hankyu Kobe/Takarazuka/Kyoto lines, making it one of the best-connected residential neighborhoods in the entire city.
That connectivity is significant. Nakatsu offers something that genuinely few neighborhoods in Osaka can match: the feel of a slow, lived-in local neighborhood, combined with subway access that puts you at Namba in eight minutes and Shin-Osaka (Shinkansen) in five. You are not compromising on commute to live here. You are gaining both.
The neighborhood has a particular visual character — a mix of old shotengai (covered shopping streets), postwar low-rise buildings, newer residential construction, and a fast-growing density of independent cafes, small restaurants, and boutique shops that have clustered here over the past decade. It is not as preserved as Nakazakicho — it has more construction, more visible change — but that ongoing development is part of what gives it energy. Nakatsu feels like a neighborhood in motion, rather than one frozen in amber.
Time Out's ranking specifically cited its community feel, its culinary creativity, and its status as a neighborhood where Osaka locals actually want to live — not a tourist draw, not a developer's project, but an organic accumulation of people who chose it deliberately.
These two neighborhoods are often grouped together in Osaka coverage, and the comparison is understandable — they are adjacent, share a similar alternative character, and attract a similar demographic. But for anyone choosing where to actually live and rent, the differences matter.
Nakazakicho's housing stock is older and more constrained — dominated by machiya and pre-1980s low-rise buildings, many individually owned, with low turnover and limited supply. Nakatsu has a more varied stock: older character buildings alongside newer mid-rise constructions from the 1990s and 2000s, and a growing number of smaller modern apartment buildings catering specifically to the young professional market. This variety translates to more frequent availability and a broader range of price points.
In Nakazakicho, a significant proportion of landlords are long-term individual owners with deeply personal decision-making around tenants. In Nakatsu, you find more of a mix — some individual owners, but also more management companies, including some that have developed explicit policies around foreign tenant acceptance. This makes the screening process in Nakatsu somewhat more predictable, though not uniformly easy.
Nakatsu has a more established foreign resident community than Nakazakicho. Some landlords and property managers in the area have genuine experience with international tenants — not just in theory, but in practice. That experience creates a baseline of familiarity that can meaningfully reduce friction in the application process for the right applicant profiles.
If Nakazakicho is Osaka's most romantic option — the neighborhood you fall in love with from a photo — Nakatsu is the more pragmatic choice that turns out to be just as good to actually live in, and meaningfully easier to actually move into. For many foreign residents, it ends up being the better decision.
The demographic of Nakatsu has been shifting for around a decade, and the current resident profile is a genuine mix that reflects the neighborhood's transitional energy.
Long-term Japanese residents — families, older individuals who have been in their apartments for twenty or thirty years — coexist with a newer layer of younger Japanese professionals, creative workers, and a growing international community. The foreign resident presence spans nationalities and backgrounds: English teachers, designers, remote workers, people employed at companies in Umeda's business district, and a number of entrepreneurs who chose Nakatsu specifically because it offers a quality of life that the price tag does not obviously match.
This mixing matters for the rental dynamic. In a neighborhood where foreign residents have been living without incident for years, the baseline landlord attitude toward international applicants is meaningfully different from a neighborhood with no such history. Not uniformly welcoming — Japan's rental market does not work that way — but more familiar, and familiarity reduces the unknown-risk calculation that drives many rejections.
If you're curious about where foreign residents actually concentrate in Osaka, Nakatsu is one of the areas showing consistent growth in international residents — a trend that is likely to accelerate following the Time Out recognition.
Nakatsu's rental market is more accessible to foreign applicants than Nakazakicho's — but that is a relative statement, and it's worth understanding what it actually means before you begin searching.
"More accessible" does not mean "easy." The structural barriers that affect foreign applicants across Osaka — guarantor requirements, screening processes designed for Japanese nationals, documentation in Japanese, informal landlord preferences that never appear in listings — all exist in Nakatsu. What is different is degree and distribution.
Because Nakatsu has a more varied property stock, there are more properties in the neighborhood that have been explicitly approved for foreign tenants. Because some management companies operating here have processed foreign applications before, the screening process at those specific properties follows a more predictable path. And because the neighborhood's creative-professional demographic overlaps with the kind of foreign applicant (stable employment, long-term visa, clear income documentation) who tends to be most successful in the rental market, there is less of the gap between "who the neighborhood attracts" and "who the rental market is designed for" that creates such friction in some other areas.
Understanding how the Japanese real estate market actually functions beneath its surface is the foundation for navigating any neighborhood here — and Nakatsu is no exception.
The Time Out ranking has had a measurable effect on demand. Nakatsu was already a neighborhood that foreign residents discovered through word of mouth; now it is being discovered through international media, which accelerates the process. Supply has not expanded at the same rate. The practical consequence: competition for the best properties in Nakatsu is higher than it was two years ago, and the window between a unit becoming available and being taken has shortened. Being prepared — with documentation, with professional support, with clear criteria — is no longer optional in this market. It is the baseline for succeeding.
Nakatsu's housing stock is one of its strengths — more variety than most neighborhoods its size in Osaka. Here is what you can realistically expect to encounter:
A growing segment of the Nakatsu market, particularly in the areas closer to the station. These buildings were constructed with the young professional market in mind — compact but well-designed units, modern amenities, standardized management through mid-to-large property companies. They tend to have the most consistent screening processes and the highest rate of foreigner compatibility, simply because their management structures were built with more standardized criteria. They are also the most competitive, precisely because their process clarity attracts more applicants.
The core of the mid-market stock in Nakatsu. Concrete construction, typically four to eight stories, with a mix of management structures — some through large companies, others through smaller local agencies. Quality varies more here than in newer buildings. The management company a property uses determines more about your application experience than the building itself.
Nakatsu has some older residential stock — not as concentrated or as distinctively preserved as Nakazakicho's machiya, but including a number of pre-1980s low-rise buildings with lower rents and more individual landlord management. These properties are the most variable in terms of foreigner acceptance — some owners have been renting to international tenants for years, others have never done so. The unpredictability here is higher, and the value of having an agency with direct landlord relationships is correspondingly greater.
Several share house operators have established properties in and around Nakatsu, drawn by its accessibility and its appeal to the young international demographic. These typically offer the most flexible screening — accepting Working Holiday Visa holders, short-term residents, and applicants without the income documentation required by traditional rental applications. Quality and management standards vary considerably between operators.
Nakatsu's prices reflect its desirability — it is not a budget neighborhood — but they remain meaningfully below the premium central business districts like Honmachi, and roughly comparable to Nakazakicho with slightly more range on the affordable end.
These ranges represent typical market conditions and will vary based on building age, floor level, renovation quality, and proximity to the station. Newer buildings command a meaningful premium over older stock of equivalent size.
As always in Japan, the monthly rent is only part of the financial picture. Initial move-in costs — security deposit, agency fee, guarantor company fee, and first month's rent — typically represent three to five times the monthly rent, paid before you receive your keys. On a ¥90,000/month apartment in Nakatsu, plan for ¥270,000–¥450,000 upfront. This is a consistent feature of the Japanese rental market that surprises many first-time renters in Japan, and it is worth factoring into your financial planning well before you start viewing properties.
For a broader calibration of what Osaka costs as a city, our guide on what it actually costs to rent in Osaka provides helpful comparative context across neighborhoods and property types.
The gap between what appears in a Suumo or Athome listing and what you need to know to make a good decision about a Nakatsu property is significant. Several things routinely go unmentioned:
Two apartment buildings side by side in Nakatsu — similar age, similar price, similar floor plans — can produce radically different application experiences depending on which management company operates them. One may have a straightforward foreigner-acceptance policy, work with a guarantor that processes non-permanent residents quickly, and offer a bilingual contract process. The other may have never processed a foreign application, work with a guarantor that doesn't accept certain visa types, and require documentation that is not clearly specified until you are already mid-application.
None of this appears in the listing. It lives in the knowledge of professionals who work with these companies regularly. This is one of the clearest illustrations of why what "foreigner-friendly" actually means in the Osaka market requires more than a surface reading of available inventory.
Nakatsu is a neighborhood in active development. New buildings are going up. Some streets that were quiet two years ago now have active construction sites. This is part of the neighborhood's evolution — and it is something to factor into where specifically within Nakatsu you choose to live. Street-level research matters here more than in more static neighborhoods.
Properties very close to the Midosuji Line — particularly on the side of the tracks closest to Umeda — can experience meaningful train noise, particularly in buildings with older window construction. This is rarely mentioned in listings but affects daily life. Floor level and building orientation relative to the tracks matters for properties in the immediate station vicinity.
As Nakatsu's profile rises, landlords in the area are becoming more aware of their market position. Rent renewal negotiations — typically at the two-year lease renewal point — are increasingly being used to bring rents closer to current market rates. For tenants planning a multi-year stay, understanding how lease renewals work in Japan before signing is important context.
Nakatsu is more foreigner-accessible than many Osaka neighborhoods — but the specific barriers that affect international applicants are still present and require deliberate navigation.
The single most important variable in your Nakatsu rental application — before income, before occupation, before any other factor — is your visa type. Properties managed by companies with standardized foreign-tenant policies typically have explicit policies by visa category: permanent residents and long-term visa holders in stable employment have the highest acceptance rates; Working Holiday Visa holders, students, and newly arrived professionals on short-term visas face more restrictions.
This segmentation exists across Osaka, but it is worth understanding specifically in Nakatsu because the neighborhood attracts a diverse mix of visa types — and the difference in outcome between a well-supported application on a short-term visa and an unsupported one can be significant. If you are on a Working Holiday Visa and want to rent in this area, the process is navigable but requires specific knowledge of which properties and guarantors will work for your situation. Our guide to finding an apartment on a Working Holiday Visa in Osaka addresses this directly.
Nakatsu's cafe culture and lifestyle infrastructure has made it a natural destination for digital nomads and remote workers relocating to Osaka. This profile — strong income, flexible schedule, international employment — is actually one that the Japanese rental market handles poorly in its standard screening framework. Japanese screening was designed around domestic employment contracts and payslips in yen from Japanese companies. Foreign income, variable income, multi-currency income all require different documentation and a different approach to the guarantor process.
If you are renting in Japan as a digital nomad, Nakatsu is one of the better neighborhoods for your lifestyle — but the rental process requires specific preparation that generic guides do not cover. Similarly, self-employed foreign residents face a particular documentation challenge that applies here as it does across the city.
Every standard rental application in Japan requires a guarantor company (保証会社). In Nakatsu, the guarantor companies used by the most desirable properties tend to be mid-tier national providers — more standardized than the local guarantors you find in Nakazakicho, but with their own set of criteria for foreign applicants. Understanding how guarantor companies work in Japan — and specifically which ones are compatible with your visa type and income profile — is essential preparation before you begin applying.
Beyond the rental process, it's worth addressing what living in Nakatsu actually delivers day to day — because the quality of daily life is part of what makes the search worth doing.
The neighborhood is genuinely walkable in the way that matters: not just in terms of distance, but in terms of having what you need within a short walk. There are grocery stores — including at least one supermarket with evening hours — a post office, several pharmacies, a range of restaurants at different price points, and the kind of coffee shop density that sustains a morning routine without requiring planning. The Nakatsu Shotengai, the neighborhood's covered shopping street, anchors the daily infrastructure in a way that feels human-scaled rather than commercial.
The Midosuji Line connection at Nakatsu Station means that Umeda — with all of its transport connections, department stores, and business infrastructure — is a three-minute subway ride. Namba is eleven minutes. Shin-Osaka is five. For residents who travel, commute to the business district, or need to move frequently around the Kansai region, the location is genuinely excellent.
Evening life in the neighborhood is increasingly active without being loud. The bar and restaurant scene is oriented toward local residents rather than tourists — which means the energy dissipates by midnight rather than running through the early hours. For foreign residents who want a neighborhood with a genuine social life but also want to sleep, this balance is one of Nakatsu's real practical advantages.
Nakatsu is a neighborhood where the value of working with the right professional shows up in two distinct ways — access and speed.
Access: In a market where the best properties move quickly and where a meaningful portion of available inventory is distributed through agency relationships rather than public platforms, being represented by an agency that has existing relationships with Nakatsu's management companies changes what is visible to you. Not all good properties in this neighborhood are listed on aggregator sites. Some are offered directly to agencies with standing relationships. If you are searching independently, you are looking at a subset of the real market.
Speed: When a property becomes available in a competitive neighborhood like Nakatsu post-2025, the window to act is short — sometimes 24 to 48 hours from listing to accepted application. Applicants who need to start from scratch with documentation, who have not pre-screened their guarantor compatibility, and who have no existing relationship with the managing agency are structurally disadvantaged in this window. Applicants who arrive ready — with professional support that has already done the background work — are not.
This is what Maido Estate provides in neighborhoods like Nakatsu: not just a search service, but the preparation, relationships, and market knowledge that determine whether you succeed or lose out in a tight window. You can read about how we search for apartments on behalf of foreign clients — a process designed specifically for markets where public listings are only part of the picture.
If you're weighing your options for professional support, our overview of what to look for in a real estate agent in Osaka as a foreigner lays out the criteria that actually separate useful support from generic service.
Nakatsu is a strong choice — but it is worth understanding what the alternatives look like before committing to a search there specifically.
Immediately to the east — a five-minute walk. More preserved, more character, lower supply, harder to rent as a foreigner. The neighborhood for those who prioritize aesthetic above all else and are prepared for a longer, more uncertain search. Nakazakicho's rental market has its own specific dynamics worth understanding before you decide between the two.
One stop west on the Midosuji Line, or a fifteen-minute walk. More modern, more restaurant-dense, more diverse property stock, and consistently one of the most foreigner-accessible neighborhoods in Osaka's central area. If the Nakatsu search feels too competitive or your visa profile makes it difficult, Fukushima offers many of the same lifestyle qualities with a somewhat more navigable market.
Ten minutes on foot — a completely different urban scale, but with the highest supply of any central Osaka neighborhood and the most standardized management processes. For foreign applicants with stable employment and clear income documentation, Umeda offers greater certainty of outcome, at the cost of the neighborhood character that Nakatsu provides.
One stop east on the Tanimachi Line. Deeper local character, more affordable price points, higher turnover. Worth exploring for those who want the northern Osaka feel at a slightly lower price point and with more available inventory.
Nakatsu earns its ranking. It is one of the neighborhoods in Osaka where the combination of location, daily quality of life, community energy, and rental accessibility for foreign residents comes together in a way that is genuinely unusual. It is not perfect — the market is tighter than it was, the process still requires preparation and professional support, and the barriers that affect foreign applicants across Osaka exist here too. But as a place to actually live, it delivers what it promises.
If you want to understand what is realistically possible for your profile in Nakatsu — your visa type, your income documentation, your timeline — Maido Estate is the right starting point. Not as a sales conversation, but as a practical discussion about what the market actually looks like for someone in your specific situation.
Get in touch with Maido Estate →
Let's have an honest conversation about your options in Nakatsu — and what you need to have in place to move quickly when the right property appears.
Other resources worth reading before your Osaka move:
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