Places tbgtigger Wants to Go

Cherry blossom season comes early in this Japanese town where pink flowers line the streets and riverbanks.

These Japanese gardens are blankets of light for dark winter nights.

A disconnected rotary phone for "calling" lost loved ones offered a unique way of dealing with grief in disaster-stricken Japan.

This ruined Japanese stripclub sits half burnt to the ground.

This active volcano's siren song to suicide jumpers forced authorities to build a fence.

The largest volcanic caldera in Japan holds an entire city in its maw.

This pond is so stunning it looks like you've stepped into one of Monet's masterpieces.

A rare festival blending religion, blacksmiths, vagina dentata, sex workers, and the straight-up facts of life.

This sawtooth mountain range still bears the strangely lovely marks of its history as a medieval quarry.

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

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

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

Abandoned Japanese ghost town gives a glimpse into what our own metropolises may leave behind.

The world's largest drain sits below the city of Kasukabe, Japan.

This mesmerizingly colorful pond looks like a scene straight out of a fairytale.

A Buddhist temple to honor insects that died for science.

Meet the world's longest tapeworm in a collection that really gets under your skin.

Drinkslinger is an unlikely vocation for a Buddhist monk, but at this Tokyo bar the enlightenment is served in a martini glass.

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

Go through the looking glass in Tokyo's Wonderland-themed shop.

Reportedly 1,400 years old, this may be the first of the Fiji Mermaids.

An ordinary pond with fish from out of this world.

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

Nine Gardens in one—with tea service.