"Compared with the other cities vying for the Olympics, Osaka has the best infrastructure and sports facilities," Osaka Mayor Takasumi Isomura told Reuters.
"That is the point we are going to stress to the IOC," he said in defence of the city dubbed "The Chicago of Japan".
The 17-member commission, led by International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Hein Verbruggen, was greeted at Kansai International Airport, the floating hub in the sea that serves Osaka, by Mayor Isomura and Foreign Minister Yohei Kono.
"We are ready to have a wonderful evaluation visit to your city from tomorrow," Verbruggen said, arriving for four days in Osaka after a similar four-day inspection tour of Beijing.
The city, Japan's third-largest after Tokyo and Yokohama, is something of an outside candidate alongside Istanbul in the Olympic race, with front-runners Beijing, Paris and Toronto a lot better known. The IOC will vote on which city gets the 2008 Games at a meeting in Moscow on July 13.
Young women in kimonos presented the IOC members with flowers at their hotel.
Many local people seem to doubt that Osaka stands a real chance of winning the Games.
"Osaka has an unsophisticated image," 70-year-old pensioner Rokunosuke Kitagawa said.
"We are used to it because we live in Osaka but people from outside think we are unsophisticated and that is why I don't think Osaka has a chance of hosting the Olympics."
The bid has supporters and critics at home. Supporters say the city's international image and its stalled economy would be boosted by the Olympics.
"I think the Olympics should come to Osaka to improve the economy which is falling into decline now," company worker Kanta Onishi said.
Critics counter that hosting the Games would spell yet more debt for a city already groaning under the weight of nearly five trillion yen ($42.88 billion) worth of municipal bonds.
"Osaka's economy will improve if the Olympics are held here," one woman office worker said.
"But I don't think the city has given much thought to what we will do with the Olympic facilities when the Games are finished."
IOC experts said when Osaka was short-listed last April that it failed to top the list of any of 10 organisational criteria for choosing the successful city, such as transport, venues and infrastructure.
The bid's supporters are pitching the city's high level of safety and the fact that some two-thirds of the Olympic facilities are already built as key to Osaka's appeal.
Still to be built are the main stadium seating 80,000 people and a swimming pool, both on Maishima, a reclaimed island in Osaka Bay. An Athletes' Village is to be built on another reclaimed island, Yumeshima, next to Maishima.
An Osaka city official said building and renovating the facilities would cost 139.8 billion yen, of which the central government had promised to provide half.
The city has plans for a new subway linking its centre with Maishima and Yumeshima, which will cost some 187 billion yen.
Advocates say hosting the Games would be good for businesses and boost future tax revenues needed to pay off the city's debt.
"When people think of Japan they think only of Tokyo," said 29-year-old Miyuki Ikeno. "If the Olympics come to Osaka then Osaka too will become famous."
Reuters
A cabinet minister and kimono-clad young women turned out to greet Olympics inspectors when they arrived on Sunday in Japan's western metropolis Osaka to evaluate its bid to stage the 2008 Summer Games.
