Southern Osaka has a secret that is hard to see from the ground: its suburbs are woven around ancient burial mounds, some of them among the largest tombs ever built. In Sakai, these kofun belong to the Mozu group, which, together with the Furuichi group further east, was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2019. Tatsusayama is one of the smaller mounds, a wooded hill surrounded by houses and roads, but it is part of the same story. Between roughly the fourth and sixth centuries, the rulers of the Yamato court and their elite were buried in tombs shaped like keyholes when seen from above, with moats around them and clay figures called haniwa placed on their slopes.
The largest, the Daisen Kofun attributed to Emperor Nintoku, is close by and is nearly half a kilometre long, so big that you can only appreciate its shape from the observation floor of Sakai City Hall or from the air. The tombs are under the control of the Imperial Household Agency and cannot be entered, so you walk around their moats, with turtles and herons in the water and the dense forest of the mounds rising behind. It is a strangely peaceful experience in the middle of a busy city.
Sakai has another side as an old merchant city. In the sixteenth century it was a rich, largely self-governing port, trading with China and the Portuguese, and it was the home of Sen no Rikyu, the master who shaped the Japanese tea ceremony. The city is still famous for its knives, made by hand in small workshops, and many chefs consider Sakai blades the best in the country.
This is urban riding, plain and simple: traffic lights, expressways, buses and bicycles on the pavements. Do not come here for the corners. Come for the history and as a starting point for better roads, south towards the Izumi mountains and Wakayama, or east into the hills of Nara and the Kii peninsula, where the old pilgrimage routes to Kumano lead through deep forest. Fuel, food and lodging are everywhere in Sakai. Try a bowl of noodles near the station and visit a knife shop; even if you buy nothing, watching the sharpening is a pleasure.