The legendary Japanese filmmaker’s tombstone is marked by a single letter meaning “nothing," and bottles of sake.

This frenetic mural recalls an annual festival that once took the city by storm.

A bronze statue dating back as far as 1252, still has remnants of gold on its right cheek from ancient gilding.

A bibliophile's heaven that contains hundreds of bookstores, offering over a third of secondhand books for sale in Tokyo.

This shrine, built to protect against destructive waves, is home to two monumental lion heads.

A historic cemetery filled with quirky faux wood art and unique tombstones.

Tiny observatory made big contributions to the study of the Earth's motion.

Using a massive antenna made up of five miles of wire, two scientists tuned into organic radio waves from the planet Jupiter.

At Washington's Dulles Airport is a satellite museum (no pun intended) with three quarters of a million square feet of aircraft history.

These unusual rooms on wheels are holdovers from the 1960s.

Home of the physician who set the leg of John Wilkes Booth after the Lincoln assassination.

An overlooked memorial honoring the local Washington residents who died in World War I.

A state park that once served as an important river crossing, and now offers protected lands for endangered plants and animals.

One of the earliest and best-preserved buildings in Charles County, Maryland.

The little-known, 300-year history of the area includes former lives as a bustling tobacco port, parking lot, and industrial dump.

A gift from Japan, 17th-century lantern stands among the cherry trees at D.C.'s Tidal Basin.

A high school astronomy enthusiast designed this model of our solar system to be traversed on foot.

While not recognized by Guinness, this chocolate waterfall is likely to be the world's largest.

This rare triple-jurisdiction drawbridge passes through Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.

A mammoth pair of Civil War artillery guns abandoned out in the forest.

Evidence of a long-ago crush remains scratched into the glass at this historic Maryland House.

This fort down the Potomac from Washington, D.C. was once the only defensive fort protecting the capital.

A haunting exhibit in a wildlife refuge center highlights threatened species and the conservation efforts needed to save them.

This dig site outside D.C. is known for its exceptionally high density of baby dinosaur fossils and dinosaur eggs.