Perhaps best known for being the site of a WWII tragedy, Nagasaki has rebuilt itself as one of Japan’s most charming port cities, with culturally significant attractions far beyond museums and memorials. You’ll get a three-hour crash course in navigating Nagasaki, from its lively shopping streets to the peaceful Nagasaki Seaside Park – and get plenty of food recommendations at Chinatown along the way. You’ll see the curiously-shaped Fukusai-ji temple, rebuilt after WWII as a mausoleum for fallen Japanese soldiers, but you’ll also experience the side of Nagasaki’s history you might be less familiar with at the European-style Oura Cathedral and Dutch Slope – a stone-paved street with the former Western-style residences of foreign traders.

With your host playing the role of GPS and guidebook, you’ll get to grips with an area of central Nagasaki along the bank of Urakami River. Learn to jostle your way through the crowded, crisscrossing lanes of the oldest Chinatown in Japan, and learn to appreciate the other side of Nagasaki’s rich port history in Higashiyamate and Dejima, you’ll be an honorary local in no time! Along the way, you’ll squeeze in plenty of sightseeing, like the 400-year old Meganebashi Bridge, and Kōshi-byō, a Confucian temple with statues of his 72 disciples, one of which (or so locals believe) resembles someone in your family...