With over 12,000 different species of plants, this botanical garden is Japan's oldest and most diverse.

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

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.

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

A shrine contains nearly 200 statues of the Buddhist deity Jizo, dressed in bibs by parents who have lost a child.

If Hello Kitty were Mickey Mouse, this would be Disneyland.

The demolished ruins of a poorly located Japanese Love Hotel.

An infamous house made famous by director Takashi Shimizu.

This historical theme park celebrates all things noodle.

This faux-seedy Japanese arcade is made up to look like a maze of alleys straight out of a cyberpunk dystopia.

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

A unique Shinto shrine filled with bunnies and wordplay.

Japan's iconic sci-fi hero rendered to 8-bit by notorious French street artist Invader.

The freshest fish here are the ones you catch yourself.

Tokyo’s only Ainu restaurant serves Indigenous food from northern Japan.

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

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

Kawaii meets poisonous at this unique art gallery.

One of the few surviving World War II-era air-raid shelters in Tokyo.

Ever needed a chocolate-filled crepe in the wee hours of the morning?

A charming, homemade vending machine dispenses burgers and sandwiches at this hole-in-the-wall bakery.

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