Nagasaki's international heritage extends to its most famous speciality food , shippoku , which combines European, Chinese and Japanese tastes in lots of small dishes eaten Chinese-style at a round table. It's not a cheap meal, starting at around ¥4000 per head, and for the best shippoku you need to reserve the day before, although most of the big hotels also offer a less formal version. Nagasaki's other home-grown dishes include the cheap and cheerful chanpon , in which morsels of seafood, meat and vegetables are served with a dollop of thick noodles in piping-hot soup. Sara udon uses similar ingredients but blends them into a thicker sauce on a pile of crispy strands.

You can sample chanpon and sara udon at most of the restaurants we've listed, or try the little street immediately across from Nagasaki Station, where yellow flags announce a couple of good-value eating houses. Also check out the extensive food court in the basement of the brand new Youme Saito shopping centre, next to the Ohata Port Terminal. Just a stone's throw away, the colourful Nagasaki Dejima Wharf houses a number of trendy restaurants with views of the harbour. There's also a good choice of restaurants in the southern districts, specifically around Teramachi-dori and across the tram tracks into Shianbashi and Chinatown.

Nagasaki's entertainment district, Shianbashi , is sandwiched between Hamanomachi shopping district and Chinatown, in the south of the city. Ironically, shi-an translates as something like "peaceful contemplation", which is the last thing you'll find in this tangle of lanes, packed with bars, clubs, pachinko parlours, izakaya and "soaplands", where nothing really gets going until 10pm and ends at dawn. The choice, as ever, is bewildering, and prices can be astronomical, but a safe place to start is the With Nagasaki Building, on the east edge of the district on Kanko-dori. It's a one-stop night-out, starting in the basement with Asahi Brewery's mellow Ancient Time beer restaurant, and working upwards through a host of bars and nightclubs.