Places akiraa1 Wants to Go

This battleship of a building was designed by a famed "mad architect."

This temple is steeped in local folklore involving a teakettle and a raccoon dog.

Every spring, this walkway outside the Japan Mint turns into a cherry blossom tunnel.

Walls of VHS tapes adorn this Golden Gai B horror movie themed bar.

Inspired by the famous sculptures on Easter Island, this head serves as a popular meeting spot by Shibuya Station.

Japan's largest collection of Western-style mansions in the port city of Kobe includes a recreation of Sherlock Holmes' 221B Baker Street quarters.

A monk-run winery inside a Buddhist temple celebrates Japan's crown grape varietal.

This whimsical garbage disposal facility receives around 12,000 accidental tourists each year.

What's believed to be the country's first shrine is, in Shintō mythology, the annual meeting place of the gods.

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

This giant bronze Buddha, the third largest in Japan, is the last in an ill-fated series of statues.

A touching statue dedicated to Japan's first therapy dog.

Sample specialties from Xinjiang at this Shinjuku neighborhood gem.

This shrine dedicated to a legendary swordsman has become a pilgrimage site for the ill and infirmed.

Nope, not the one in France. The only officially-recognized reproduction of Monet’s garden in Giverny is located in a remote corner of Japan.

Luminaries from Albert Einstein to John Lennon once had a cup of coffee at Tokyo's oldest café.

More tin toys than you can shake a clapping monkey at.

Steampunk, humanoid sculptures crawl on all fours in a Tokyo plaza.

Japan's first automaton went missing, only to be revived by the Osaka Science Museum.

This water goblin statue represents a 19th-century urban legend about a haunted canal that became a Japanese idiom.

The third-tallest statue in the world depicts the "Buddha of Infinite Light," complete with observation deck in his chest.

Roots and stumps that lay inundated for two millennia are on display in Japan's city of three mysteries.

This enormous monument is one of the most iconic structures in Tokyo, rudely nicknamed "The Golden Turd."

One in a pair of subterranean caves created by an ancient eruption of Mount Fuji.