Places jamesboneill Wants to Go

Hidden beneath a beautiful overlook you’ll find the history of the city depicted in comic strip format next to a pay toilet.

A beautiful, dense forest in the shadow of Mount Fuji, with a tragic reputation.

A railway station takeout shop sells boxed meals in containers shaped like trains and snowmen that hold the country’s abundant regional delicacies.

The self-mummified monks of Japan.

The bartenders at this crime-fighting theme cafe are actual private detectives by day.

A restaurant modeled after feudal Japan, where the waitstaff are trained as ninjas.

Shrine to Japanese water-goblins, complete with their preserved body parts.

Twelve hundred stone carvings guard this off-the-beaten-path Buddhist temple.

This Buddhist temple is home to the graves of the Japanese national legends, the 47 Ronin.

Bioluminescent firefly squid light up this Japanese fishing port.

This massive wooden building contains a giant Buddha, healing pillars, and tame deer wandering the grounds.

This neighborhood thoroughfare is haunted by dozens of homemade monsters.

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

A church dedicated to the Mexican skeleton saint.

A quirky and charming restaurant founded by artists.

A disquieting Aztec sculpture displays hundreds of stone skulls representing the victims of human sacrifice.

This "City of Books" holds a museum, library, and the complete personal book collections of five of Mexico's greatest thinkers.

Explore the atmospheric ruins of an abandoned convent in the dense forests of Mexico's first national park.

A jaw-dropping "megalibrary" that turns book-browsing into a geometric adventure.

Superstitious? Discover the witchy side of Mexico through its largest esoteric market.

Part bookstore, part café, and part forest.

An island filled with hundreds of hanging, decomposing, decapitated dolls.

Six times a day a train runs right through the middle of this Thai street market, sending vendors scrambling.

Wondrous sandstone hoodoos where Native Americans collected clay for pottery, 9,000 years ago.