Places wisestworm Wants to Go

Model trains whizz around an extensive room-sized diorama of Kyoto City.

Established over a thousand years ago, this family-run teahouse continues to serve skewers of sweet rice cake to this day.

A train ride to the middle of nowhere gives its passengers some of the most iconic views of Japan's seasons.

The quintessential Japanese rock garden has existed for more than 500 years.

This 700-year-old street food market features baby octopus and soy donuts.

It's bad manners to eat and drink on the subways of Tokyo, unless the train is this bar. 

A store that sells all manner of bones, insects, and animal curiosities.

A museum dedicated to celebrating the humble wingnut.

An amazing collection of fantastic reptiles, amphibians, spiders, and insects.

Carnivorous plants, medieval aphrodisiacs, and the largest original wood structure glass conservatory in the western hemisphere.

An overlooked and unassuming engineering marvel.

An abandoned boat that's been stranded mysteriously for decades.

This print shop boasts one of the largest pinball arcades in San Francisco.

This shop specializes in oddities and Victorian-inspired wonders.

One of the last remnants of the city's Chinese nightclub scene is now a dive bar selling killer mai tais.

A Barbary Coast watering hole built into a Gold Rush shipwreck.

This surreptitious shop is only open five hours per week.

A nondescript building that's been functioning as a speakeasy for nearly a century and a half.

An vast warehouse of everyday treasures in Berkeley, CA.

Furniture tries to escape an abandoned building in San Francisco.

This antique shop specializes in the history of print and design.

This museum explores the history of the book, from scrolls to mass-produced objects through tools, stories, and massive cast-iron binding machinery (some of it operational).

Appropriation-friendly collection of books, periodicals, and more.

A shop full of natural curiosities, carnivorous plants, and costumed taxidermied mice.