MIMARU, Japan’s leading apartment accommodation brand for families and groups, will open MIMARU Osaka Namba Station Annex today on 1st October, bringing 68 apartment-style stays to the heart of the city, including a 100 sqm garden suite designed for six, with interiors inspired by the character and contrasts of its Namba neighbourhood.
Located five minutes on foot from Nankai Namba Station, the 13-storey property will feature 68 apartments ranging from 39 to 100 sqm, with half accommodating four guests and half designed for six. Every apartment includes a kitchen, dining area and in-room washer-dryer, while selected larger layouts provide separate bedrooms and additional Washbasin and restroom facilities.
For the new opening, the design team looked beyond the property itself to the streets of Namba, exploring the neighborhood on foot and observing how its dense mix of shops, restaurants, people and movement sits alongside quieter lanes and more intimate spaces.
Rather than creating a property removed from its surroundings, the design aims to offer a softer transition from the pace of the city into a space where families and groups can settle into their own rhythm.
From Namba’s Streets to a Garden Above the City
The strongest expression of this approach is the new Sky Garden Three-Bedroom Suite, a 100 sqm apartment on the top floor designed for up to six guests.
The suite features three bedrooms with six single beds, three washbasins, two toilets, a bathroom and separate shower room, alongside its own private outdoor terrace.
The terrace was conceived as an extension of the living space rather than simply a decorative feature. The designers imagined guests using it throughout their stay: having coffee outside in the morning, bringing food back from the neighbourhood to share, spending time with the children or simply taking a break between exploring different parts of Osaka.
It also reflects a wider idea explored by the design team: that in an apartment-style property, the time spent in the accommodation can become part of the experience of the destination itself, rather than the room functioning only as somewhere to sleep between days of sightseeing.
The New Family Suite Is Not Simply About Size
For Southeast Asian travellers, where holidays frequently involve parents, children, grandparents or extended family travelling together, the appeal of a larger apartment goes beyond additional square metres.
Travelling as a group of five or six brings a different set of practical considerations, from luggage and laundry to bathroom access and the simple reality that not everyone wants to sleep, shower, unpack or relax at the same time.
At MIMARU Osaka Namba Station Annex, half of the 68 apartments accommodate six guests, with layouts developed around how larger groups actually use a room. Every apartment has its own kitchen, dining area and in-room washer-dryer, while selected configurations introduce separate bedrooms and additional bathroom facilities.
The design team considered the communal spaces in much the same way. Rather than creating one large shared area in which everyone is expected to gather, different parts of the apartment allow guests to use the same space in different ways: one person might rest while another unpacks, someone else gets ready, and others spend time around the dining table.
For multi-generational families in particular, this creates a more flexible way of staying together. The family remains in one apartment and can naturally come together throughout the day, while still having enough separation for different routines, ages and travel rhythms.
It is a relatively simple distinction, but an important one: a successful family suite is not defined only by how many people it can sleep, but by how comfortably those people can share it.
The Namba Edit: For Travellers Who Think They Already Know Osaka
Dotonbori isn’t going anywhere. Neither is Kuromon Market. But for repeat visitors to Osaka, the pleasure increasingly lies in what happens between the landmarks.
From MIMARU Osaka Namba Station Annex, some of the neighbourhood’s more interesting discoveries require little more than choosing a street and walking.
1. Look at Namba Through a Designer’s Eyes
Start by doing exactly what the hotel’s design team did: walk the neighbourhood before deciding where you’re going.
Namba rewards looking sideways. There are the enormous commercial streets, certainly, but behind them are tiny restaurants, old shopfronts, kitchen suppliers, shrines and the occasional piece of greenery appearing where the density of the city suggests it shouldn’t.
2. Skip the Souvenir Shop for Osaka’s Kitchen Cupboard
For repeat visitors, Sennichimae Doguyasuji is considerably more dangerous than another department store.
The compact shopping arcade specialises in the equipment behind Osaka’s food culture: cookware, knives, utensils, tableware and the extraordinarily convincing plastic food models displayed outside Japanese restaurants.
This is less about buying a generic Osaka souvenir than finding the ceramic bowl, tiny kitchen tool or slightly unnecessary piece of Japanese cookware that somehow makes it into the suitcase.
And this time, with a kitchen waiting back at MIMARU, there is an excuse to use it before flying home.
3. Find the Osaka Hiding Behind Dotonbori
Dotonbori’s famous illuminated signs may get the photographs, but Hozenji Yokocho tells a rather different Osaka story. Tucked behind the glare of Dotonbori, the narrow stone-paved alley grew around Hozenji Temple and remains lined with restaurants and bars. The pleasure is partly in the transition: one minute, illuminated signs and crowds; a few turns later, lanterns, stone paving and somewhere that feels remarkably removed from the streets around it.
4. Lose an Hour, or Three, in Nipponbashi
For families travelling with teenagers, collectors or anyone with a particular Japanese pop-culture obsession, Den Den Town deserves more than a quick walk-through.
The Nipponbashi district specialises in electronics, gaming, manga, anime, figures and collectibles, with specialist stores that reward knowing exactly what you’re looking for, and others that make you forget entirely.
It is one of those Osaka neighbourhoods where different generations can happily disappear into different shops and reconvene considerably later.
5. Meet Namba’s Most Unexpected Resident
A short walk away, Namba Yasaka Shrine provides perhaps the neighbourhood’s best visual non sequitur.
The otherwise relatively understated shrine is home to an enormous lion-head stage, measuring approximately 12 metres high, its open mouth seemingly ready to swallow anyone standing beneath it.
Traditionally associated with swallowing evil spirits and bringing good fortune, it is dramatic, slightly surreal and distinctly more memorable than another morning spent in a shopping centre.
An Osaka Base Designed to Be Lived In
With Nankai Namba Station five minutes away on foot, Nipponbashi Station approximately six minutes away and Kansai International Airport around 50 minutes by rail, the new property also works as a base for travellers spending several days in Osaka or using the city to explore the wider Kansai region.
For repeat visitors in particular, this creates a different way to experience a familiar city: exploring beyond Osaka’s best-known landmarks during the day, returning to a neighbourhood that remains lively well into the evening, and having an apartment that functions as a shared living space rather than simply a hotel room.
It is this combination, a design informed by Namba, larger spaces conceived around the realities of travelling together, and a neighbourhood that rewards repeat exploration, that gives MIMARU Osaka Namba Station Annex its particular sense of place.
MIMARU Osaka Namba Station Annex
- Opening: 1 October 2026
- Apartments: 68, ranging from 39–100 sqm
- Capacity: Four or six guests, with half of the property dedicated to each
- All apartments: Kitchen, dining area and in-room washer-dryer
- Signature accommodation: 100 sqm Sky Garden Three-Bedroom Suite with private terrace
- Location: Five minutes on foot from Nankai Namba Station South Exit; six minutes from Nipponbashi Station Exit 5; approximately 50 minutes by rail from Kansai International Airport.
