🇯🇵

Nagasaki

Japan

Japan's only opening to the outside world during two centuries of seclusion — Dejima, Chinatown and the Peace Park in one harbour valley.

Nagasaki fills a steep-sided harbour on the west coast of Kyushu, its houses stacked up the hillsides above the bay. From the 1630s to the 1850s it was the country's single channel for foreign trade — Dutch merchants confined to the artificial island of Dejima, Chinese traders in a quarter of their own — and the city still eats and builds differently because of it. On 9 August 1945 an atomic bomb detonated over the Urakami valley to the north; the Peace Park and the Atomic Bomb Museum stand there now. Trams reach almost everything, and the view down over the bay from Mount Inasa is one of the best known night panoramas in Japan.

Best time to visit

March–April for cherry blossom, or October–November. The Lantern Festival falls at Chinese New Year in January or February, and the Kunchi festival runs 7–9 October.