Places samireland Wants to Go

A whimsical museum dedicated to the mischievous kappa, a mythical cucumber-loving water sprite.

One of the world's largest ancient burial mounds.

A thick blanket of beautiful pampas grass cloaks this unique Japanese landscape.

Sulphuric gases inhabit a beautiful Japanese island.

This ancient shrine has been rebuilt every 20 years since the eighth century.

This incredible mountainside temple is home to intriguing statues of demon-like creatures.

Visitors to this park are welcomed by an ancient Japanese megalithic tomb that dates back to the sixth century.

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

A Japanese train station built around a 700-year-old camphor tree.

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

The world's longest tunnel with an undersea section.

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

450 dead and frozen fish, proudly on display in Japan.

A small island with no monkeys but plenty of military ruins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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