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Sasebo is a city of about 231,000 people on the north-western coast of Nagasaki Prefecture, the second largest in the prefecture after Nagasaki itself. It lies on a deep inlet of the East China Sea, with the scattered islands of Kujūkushima to the west, and it is a core city of Japan.
A fishing village until the 1880s, Sasebo was chosen as the site of a naval district, opened in 1889, and grew into one of the main bases of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Bombing in June 1945 destroyed much of the city. Since the war the harbour has been shared by the United States Navy and the Maritime Self-Defense Force.
Visitors ride a boat through the Ninety-Nine Islands or look down on them from Tenkaihō and Mount Yumihari, visit the white church by the station, eat a hand-made Sasebo burger, and spend a day in the Dutch streets of Huis Ten Bosch out at the edge of the city.
Kujūkushima, the Ninety-Nine Islands, is the drowned ria coastline north and west of Sasebo, where more than 200 small islands lie scattered in the sea. The whole group is part of Saikai National Park and is seen from clifftop lookouts and from sightseeing boats out of Kashimae.
Tenkaihō is the hilltop lookout park on the Tawaragaura Peninsula south-west of central Sasebo, laid out from 1981 above the southern Ninety-Nine Islands. Its round flower bed is planted with rape blossom in spring and cosmos in autumn, and sightseeing boats pass among the islands below.
Mount Yumihari rises 364 metres just west of the centre of Sasebo, with a concrete-roofed observatory on top looking over the city, the naval harbour and shipyards on one side and the Ninety-Nine Islands on the other. Its night view is listed among the 100 best in Japan.
Kujūkushima Pearl Sea Resort is the waterfront complex at Kashimae in Sasebo, opened in 1994 as the gateway to the southern Ninety-Nine Islands. It holds the Umikirara aquarium, known for its jellyfish and local sea life, along with shops, restaurants and the pier for the island cruise boats.
Catholic Miuramachi Church stands on a rise facing Sasebo Station and was dedicated in 1931, a white church looking over the naval port. In the war its white walls were coated black with tar to hide it from air raids, and it came through the great bombing of Sasebo in June 1945 unburnt.
The JMSDF Sasebo Museum, nicknamed the Sail Tower, is the naval museum in the centre of Sasebo, opened in 1997 and run by the Maritime Self-Defense Force. Visitors ride to the seventh floor for the view over the harbour and walk down through floors on the navy's history since the 1800s.
The Sasebo burger is the hand-made hamburger of Sasebo, said to date from around 1950, when cooks near the United States naval base were given the recipe by American sailors. Each is made to order rather than kept warm, and dozens of shops around the city serve their own version.
The Yonkachō arcade runs through the middle of Sasebo and, with the Sankachō arcade it joins, forms the longest straight covered shopping street in Japan, almost one kilometre from end to end. Its roof was first built in 1966 and renewed in 1990, over shops, cafés and burger stands.
Huis Ten Bosch is the theme park in the east of Sasebo, opened in 1992 on Ōmura Bay, which rebuilds a Dutch town in brick along six kilometres of canals, with windmills, tulip beds and a copy of a Dutch royal palace. It is the largest single theme park in Japan, planted with 400,000 trees.
Kuroshima Church stands on Kuroshima, the largest of the Ninety-Nine Islands, about 10 kilometres off Sasebo, and was built of brick by the islanders under Father Marmand and finished in 1902. An Important Cultural Property, it is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site of hidden Christian places.
Saikai Bridge crosses the Haridonoseto strait at the southern edge of Sasebo, completed in 1955 and at the time the third longest fixed arch bridge in the world. An Important Cultural Property since 2020, it looks down on whirlpools in one of Japan's fastest tidal races.
Mikawachi ware is the porcelain made in the Mikawachi district of Sasebo, begun by Korean potters brought to the Hirado domain around 1600. Its white porcelain is painted in cobalt blue, above all with Chinese children under a pine, and it was named a traditional craft of Japan in 1978.
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