Architectural Oddities in Japan

This adorable birdlike police box is designed based on a play on words.

Though technically an illegal structure, this eclectic DIY apartment complex is beloved by its residents.

A 14th-century European chapel sticks out of the facade of a Japanese hotel.

This town near Nagasaki is flecked with fruit-flavored bus stops.

This high-design church is made up of two dizzying spirals meant to evoke the weaving together of marriage.

Closed for decades, this strange symbol of Japan's Expo '70 has finally opened its psychedelic insides to the public.

A Japanese corporation has turned this small island town into living modern art gallery.

The original "capsule building" is a masterpiece of Metabolist architecture.

The giant figure on the back of this turtle-shaped temple actually hides a memorial pendulum.

One of the first hotel rooms in a pod.

Disaster prevention apartment blocks in Sumida Ward are designed to save as many as possible in the face of the inevitable.

A plaque marks the site directly below the mid-air detonation of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima.

An exquisite tunnel of cascading flowers.

Okinawan dining in a twenty foot tall, man-made tree house overlooking Naha Harbor.

The Hanshin Expressway goes right through its 5th, 6th, and 7th floors.

Open-air museum with an elaborate sculpture garden, stretching for over 70,000 square-meters.