The site of Japan’s first archaeological excavation is also the birthplace of fingerprint forensics.

This snack factory boasts several tributes to its popular line of rice crackers, including a quasi-shrine.

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

This iconic sluice gate is a favorite haunt for joggers, fishing enthusiasts, and even ghost hunters.

Museum dedicated to the largest battleship ever built.

This futuristic public park includes large sculptures and an artificial geyser.

One in a pair of subterranean caves created by an ancient eruption of Mount Fuji.

This village is home to the largest existing settlement of the Ainu, the Indigenous people of Japan.

Along the side of the road on a small Japanese island is an extensive garden of uniquely designed Shisa statues.

This amusement park brings a little slice of England to the heart of Kyushu.

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

A bibliophile's heaven that contains hundreds of bookstores, offering over a third of secondhand books for sale in Tokyo.

According to one legend, this bridge was crafted after monkeys formed a body-bridge across the gorge.

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.

Tell this pair of "love-inviting" cats in Ginza your romantic hopes.

This mysterious medieval grotto holds a grid of sacred wells of unknown purpose.

An enormous pair of straw sandals woven in the traditional way—to keep demons at bay.

A rare example of an ancient Japanese hill castle believed to be the fortress of a legendary demon.

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

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

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

This enormous "shamoji" means more to the people of Miyajima than just a way getting rice onto a plate.

"Excuse me sir, your submarine is blocking my building."

A deserted island in southwest Japan that once sheltered persecuted Christians.