Places Skuttel Wants to Go

Stuck in a bygone era, the oldest subterranean shopping street in Japan hides beneath the popular Asakusa district of Tokyo.

A few hidden stones are said to bring fortune and love.

A Japanese shrine to dolls.

An eerie reminder to the horrors of World War II.

The world's longest tunnel with an undersea section.

One of the world's largest ancient burial mounds.

Mythical beasts symbolizing the city of Tokyo guard a historic bridge.

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

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

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

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

The largest collection of model trains in the world is actually run using full-size locomotive technology.

Giant art made in Japanese rice fields.

Existing for more than four centuries, the last of Hakone’s historic teahouses serves a sweet, mold-based rice drink.

Sidle into a side alley for a taste of sumo wrestlers' traditional hot-pot soup, in a tiny restaurant founded by a former competitor.

A sobering scientific reminder of the human damage caused by the advent of the nuclear age.

Make your own fake treats at this factory and workshop in the epicenter of Japan's food replica industry.

A network of sandy streets lined with verdant fukugi trees weaves throughout this tiny seaside town.

A massive wintry wall of snow up to 66 feet tall flanks a highway through Japan's mountains.

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.

You can still find treasures on the pebbly beaches of one of the world's oldest jade-producing areas.

A moss-covered statue of a Japanese Buddhist deity stands at a quiet temple in downtown Osaka.

Children's literature inside, forest all around.

This 14th-century temple is also known as the "Temple of the Golden Pavilion" for its gorgeous gilded reliquary hall.