As I'm sure you may well know by now, my wife and I are celebrating our honeymoon this fall by spending 5 full weeks crossing Honshu. We're ending our trip in Nagasaki, where we'll spend 3 nights, then one final night in Tokyo before flying home.

We are staying in the Matsu no Ma room at Sakamotoya ryokan and I'm a bit concerned that we may be completely burned out on ryokan by the time we reach Nagasaki.

It will have been 4.5 weeks of non-stop travel, and while I'm looking forward to experiencing what looks like a wonderful historic inn and I'm hopeful about our stay, I'm also realistic that the lack of privacy and personal space and weeks spent sleeping on tatami mats might well catch up with us at this point.

I'm trying to plan a back-up if this happens, and have been looking at other options in Nagasaki. There are two hotels which I've been considering, neither of which appear to be centrally located and both seem to be a bit out of the way.

The first is Garden Terrace Nagasaki Hotel, which looks interesting architecturally, but the interior looks a bit like an Ikea store display and I'm uncertain about it's location and accessibility/walkability.

I have purposefully not really planned this portion of our trip as I'd like to just wander around and get lost; happen upon interesting sights, discover great places to eat, etc.

The obvious "highlights" have been noted - the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and Peace Park & Memorial Hall, Clover Garden and Former Glover Residence, Dejima Wharf, Shinchi Chinatown, Suwa-jinja Shrine, Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum, Kazagashira Park and the Cable Car to Inasa-Yama Lookout.

I suppose that all of these things could well take up the majority of our time in the city, but I wonder how inconvenienced we'd be if we switched over to the Garden Terrace.

Similarly, I'd love to take advantage of the ocean for at least a day or afternoon while in Nagasaki. I just discovered the Nomozaki: http://en.miyabidai.com/article.php/kenkomura_en

I'm having a bit of difficulty navigating the website and finding decent photos online. I'm uncertain if this is a resort style hotel (is it on a golf course?) and whether it's on a beach or has beach access. From a blog post that I came across, I get the sense that it is on a beach, which would be really nice.

A couple of questions about beaches and swimming in Nagasaki... first, will it be "beach weather" come the last week of November and first few days of December or is it beach weather year-round? Second, can you actually swim in the ocean in this area - is it safe, clean (not affected by Fukushima) and reasonable temperature?

Would we have sufficient time to spend a day at the beach given that we only have 3 nights in Nagasaki and want to see all the highlights plus wander around? Would that be a waste of time considering we live in California? We'll be inland and up in the mountains for most of the trip, so I thought it might be interesting to spend an afternoon on a beach in Nagasaki.

Also, is anyone familiar with the Sakamotoya ryokan that we presently have booked? If so, what are your thoughts? Is it worth staying put for the three nights since it's centrally located and the other two hotels seem to be out of the way? How inconvenient would it be to stay one or two of our nights at the Nomozaki and what's the atmosphere - is it a weekend beach resort, lots of families and young children, etc?

I came across a random blog that got me curious about the beaches and seasides of Nagasaki, here: http://marynewton.typepad.com/weblog...on-plan-b.html

In the above link, they visit several waterfalls but don't mention which ones or where they're located specifically. It looks very pretty and I wonder if any of you know where these might be and same questions apply with regards to our schedule and time constraints, accessibility, convenience, etc.

Here's one more blog entry that was posted right before the above, where they visit another waterfall in what looks like a very secluded area, with natural rock pools that you can swim in: http://marynewton.typepad.com/weblog...ki_ken_ro.html

I'd love to know where this is as well. Is this something we'd be able to fit into such a short stay? Should we plan to spend anytime at all by the beach or waterfront while in Nagasaki?

It's the one city in our travels that I've really done little research on and know nothing about beyond it's historic signifigance (WWII and bomb) and that it's a big bustling metropolitan.

I'd greatly appreciate any thoughts, advice or feedback... and if anyone knows about any of the above mentioned hotels or ryokan, I would also really love to hear from you!

PS - We'd be travelling via the Shinkansen Sakura from Hiroshima (we're staying at Iwaso on Miyajima the night before) probably around mid-day or mid-morning at earliest, spending whatever's left of the afternoon and evening... plus the following full day and evening... plus one more full day and evening... and then we leave for Tokyo from NRT at 2pm on our last day, so we'll probably leave for the airport at around noon.