Tokyo, Japan

Tokyo - darkometer rating : 4 - The capital city of Japan and one of the largest conurbations in the world. Tokyo, even more so than New York , stands almost metonymically for the very concept of a modern hyper-metropolis. And the cliché is justified. Those who don't like big cities will find Tokyo taxing. On the other hand, though, Tokyo also offers more quiet corners and hidden-away serenity than the uninitiated may expect. It's also a lot safer than most other megacities in the rest of the world. For the dark tourist it is not only the most likely entry point into the country, and thus a necessary stopover anyway, it also offers a range of dark sights of its own that are well worth checking out, though not all of these may necessarily appeal to everybody. > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos What there is to see: Tokyo may not play in the same league as some other big cities in terms of dark tourism, but it does offer a few rather special things. Here are the main ones, which are all given their own separate entries: - Yasukuni shrine & Yushukan museum – the controversial site of worship and paying respect to Japan's (dead) military "heroes", with a museum that is no less controversial in the skewed way in which it portrays Japan's involvement in WWII in particular. - Meguro Parasitological Museum – a whole museum dedicated to parasites, not for the squeamish, but one of the world's best-known places of the icky medical tourism category . - Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall – a small museum built around the fishing boat that in 1954 was irradiated by a US nuclear test at Bikini .