Photos: ブルーノ・プラス · CC BY-SA 4.0 · tsuda · CC BY-SA 2.0 · そらみみ · CC BY-SA 4.0 (3, 4, 5)
Osaka City runs eight municipal ferry crossings, most of them touching Taishō Ward, that carry foot passengers and bicycles free of charge as everyday transport. Four survived even after bridges were built, because the bridges over these shipping channels clear 30 to 50 m and residents refused to climb them.
Why it's unique
No other Japanese city is known to run a network of free municipal ferries as commuter transport. Small single free crossings exist elsewhere, which is the only reason for caution, but a set of eight run by the city is the Osaka thing.
What you can do here is ride all of them in a day, by bicycle or by bus and on foot, across working rivers alongside residents who use them to get to work and the shops.
Before you go
The Senbonmatsu crossing was meant to close when the 1973 bridge beside it opened, and local demand kept it: about 900 people a day still prefer the boat to climbing the bridge.
Residents doing the full set report about 3 h 40 min by bicycle for 23 km, and bus-plus-walking works too. The Ochiai-shimo crossing lands you in Hirao, which is Little Okinawa, so the obvious day is ferries plus an Okinawan lunch.
