I Tried Japan's WORST Food (So You Don't Have To)

I started the day with a 40-minute hike up a muddy path into the mountains to reach the famous Jigokudani Monkey Park. The views were incredible, even with the bad weather, and the steam rising from 'hell's valley' was quite a sight. Unfortunately, the monkeys were busy gathering food for winter, so they weren't in the hot springs. It was a moderately scenic walk, but no monkeys today.

For our daily challenge, I had to eat a strange local dish from Nagano. We found 'bee larvae' – baby bees in their grub stage, dipped in sweet soy sauce. It looked like scooped-up soil in a pot, and even the person selling it said she didn't eat it! I just cracked it open with chopsticks and ate it on its own. It was soft, squishy, slimy, and crunchy all at the same time. Definitely an unpleasant experience, but a unique local delicacy.

We explored Fureai no Sato, a forest filled with 800 lifelike statues, at night. It was genuinely scary, way more unsettling than the abandoned love hotel from the previous day. The statues are degraded, falling apart, and covered in moss and cobwebs. Seeing their silhouettes and shadows against the forest, with ruined faces and faint smiles, was incredibly creepy. We each tried to find the creepiest statue, and I found one with a charcoal black face, looking like she'd been in a fire, staring into my soul.