If you're wandering through Kenrokuen Garden (and let's be honest, you absolutely should), you might walk right past what looks like just another weathered statue. But hold up - that green-tinged figure is actually Yamato Takeru no Mikoto, basically Japan's answer to King Arthur, and it's got a better story than most of the "famous" spots you'll see selfie-sticked tourists flocking to. It was put here to honor the samurai who died during the Satsuma Rebellion - yes, the same one that Tom Cruise dramatically samurai-ed his way through in "The Last Samurai."

Here's the kicker though - this statue is famous for something completely different now. Some brilliant professor at Kanazawa University (Yukio Hirose, if you're into name-dropping at parties) figured out why birds won't poop on it. No, seriously - he won an Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering that something in the metal keeps birds from using it as a toilet. Only in Japan would you find a memorial that accidentally solved the eternal battle between statues and pigeons. I stood there for a good ten minutes just appreciating the irony of a samurai statue being most famous for repelling bird droppings.