Mount Inasa

Nagasaki is a harbour city built into a bowl of steep hills, so the houses climb the slopes and at night the whole bowl lights up in tiers. Mount Inasa, 333 metres on the western side and exactly the height of Tokyo Tower, is where you go to look at it.

The view is one of Japan's three great night views, together with Hakodate and Mount Rokko above Kobe. In 2012 a summit held in Nagasaki also declared it one of the world's three best alongside Hong Kong and Monaco, a title you will see on every poster in the city and which was, it must be said, awarded at home.

The ranking matters less than the shape of the place. Ships and cranes of the Mitsubishi yards sit on the water below, the harbour cuts the light into two halves, and the residential hills rise behind in overlapping layers. Aim for thirty to forty minutes after sunset, when there is still colour in the sky behind the ridgelines.

The ropeway from Fuchi Shrine takes five minutes and costs around 1,250 yen return. Several hotels run free evening shuttles to the ropeway station, which is worth asking about at check-in. A slope car climbs the other side, and a road goes to the top if you have a car.

The observation deck is open, glass-walled and cold in winter. There is a restaurant at the summit. Daytime is a pleasant enough view of a working port, but nobody comes up here for that.