A small laundromat covered wall-to-ceiling with portrait drawings.

A shrine dedicated to the sacred white snakes of Iwakuni, whose albinism has been passed down for generations.

A wooden prison doesn't sound like a good idea, yet this abandoned 1950s detention center still stands today.

Nestled amid the trees lies an abandoned funicular railway that dates back to the 1920s.

These seven moai figures are the world's only sanctioned replicas of the Easter Island originals.

This tiny stone in a children's park is what remains of an ancient, once-worshipped object.

A site where ten to twenty thousand Edo-era prisoners were put to death.

This massive, beautifully-lit underground quarry leaves visitors in awe.

A Buddhist temple on an artificial island that houses a monument to the fugu fish.

Home to the world's oldest wooden building.

One of the world's largest ancient burial mounds.

When this massive wooden temple ran out of rope, they made one out of devotees' hair.

A sculpture that resurrected the only tree standing following the devastating 2011 tsunami.

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

A hub of information on tropical diseases and their treatments.

Emerging from the sidewalk, this sculpture of a whale commemorates the importance of baleen in traditional Japanese puppetry.

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.

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

Designed by a computer, this intricate network of fluorescent green pipes has taken over a subway station.

Watch out for the two-story Godzilla made out of tires.

This traditional Japanese-style house doubles as one of James Turrell's colorful works of art.

Elaborate series of tunnels where traces of mass suicide are still visible.

As the aging humans of this Japanese village die off one local artisan is replacing them with eerie homonculi.

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