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

This neighborhood thoroughfare is haunted by dozens of homemade monsters.

A beautiful bamboo trail tucked in this famous Japanese Shrine.

This Kyoto Starbucks takes coffee drinkers back in time.

Every autumn, this hillside is ablaze with red summer cypress.

Largest collection of mounted dinosaur specimens in the world.

Come for the speed, leave in love with the desert.

This concert pavilion on the shore of the Great Salt Lake has been destroyed by fire, water, and disinterest but keeps coming back.

This enormous monument is one of the most iconic structures in Tokyo, rudely nicknamed "The Golden Turd."

Unbeknownst to most passersby, this marble statue standing outside an office building is a genuine piece of second-century Rome.

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

After being lost for decades, this striking mural depicting the atomic bomb covers the wall of a busy Tokyo metro station.

This adorable birdlike police box is designed based on a play on words.

Thirty architectural gems from the 19th- and early 20th-century Tokyo were restored and relocated to this space.

This little replica of Lady Liberty provides a bit of NYC in a Japanese city.

Once a black market electronics marketplace, now an otaku shopper's paradise.

Not quite the menace it once was, this monster still has some chops.

A 20-meter (65-foot) robot towers over Tokyo Bay.

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

A magical place that lets you play in and explore the world of Studio Ghibli.

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

A collection of the specialized tools used to construct Japan’s beautiful architecture.

A 59-ft. robot statue looks over the citizens of earthquake-ravaged Kobe.

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