Places dovehoward21 Wants to Go

Near the mouth of the Yodo River, this museum offers visitors six floors of hands-on learning about Osaka's raw sewage.

One of the bloodiest and most important battles in Japanese history is recreated with kitschy concrete statues.

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

This historic hydroelectric power plant in Japan has been preserved and is open to the public.

"Bug Bug" Land, a natural park for beetle watching, still hasn't fully recovered from Fukushima's nuclear disaster.

Museum dedicated to the largest battleship ever built.

Not quite the menace it once was, this monster still has some chops.

"Excuse me sir, your submarine is blocking my building."

"The Dance of Fools" is Japan's largest dance festival.

Shells collected from over a hundred different countries line the walls, floors and ceilings of this fantasy museum.

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

A statue erected on an infamous cliff where young boys would hold dangerous "pee offs" to prove their mettle.

These Japanese ruins have been brought back to life with elaborately recreated buildings.

A massive cave complex boasts some of the clearest water (and most charming bats) in the world.

The floats housed in this hall are more than 100 years old, and are brought out for an annual celebration.

For hundreds of years, participants in this Japanese festival have been making babies cry to ward off demons.

This beautiful Japanese garden is a memorial to the samurai who literally wrote the book on business as martial art.

Japan's largest and oldest annual procession of floats, begun in 869.

The largest of the Fuji Five Lakes is home to an impressive swan population—some real, some with paddles, and one with an observation deck.

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

This little replica of Lady Liberty provides a bit of NYC in a Japanese city.

The world's shortest escalator doesn't seem to have any reason to exist other than to hold a world record.

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

A steaming, boiling hellscape sources Hokkaido's thermal baths.