The small northern Japanese village of Shingo claims to be the location of Christ's tomb. The first picture above is the grave, and the second picture is a road sign pointing out its location to travelers.
According to the local story -- as revealed by the Takenouchi Documents and Christ's Will which were revealed in 1935 by a family who had safe-guarded and passed them down for generations -- as a young man in his 20s Jesus had traveled to Japan and studied the Shinto religion.
He returned to the Middle East where the events of the Gospels took place. However, he wasn't crucified. Instead he switched places with his younger brother Jsus Chri who was crucified instead. Seems kind of rude to me.
Jesus then fled from Jerusalem and, via Siberia and Alaska, made his way back to Japan where he settled in Shingo and took up rice farming. He married a woman named Miyu, had three daughters and lived to the ripe old age of either 106 or 118. His descendents, the Sawaguchi family, still live in the village.
I mentioned that the Tekenouchi Documents and His will were revealed in 1935. Curiously, also in 1935, Denjiro Sasaki the mayor of Shingo was desperately seeking to promote the village as a tourist destination. As Augustin Vidović recounts in his article Jesus Christ was their ancestor, they keep His grave in Japan! (the link has many more details about this story and shrine):
In 1935, everything seems in place, a single spark is needed for the fireworks to begin. That spark happens to be a man named Kyomaro Takeuchi, posing as the heir of the Takeuchi family (the family of the Documents), and also claiming to be an oracle. He came to Shingo that year and met Sasaki. One of his claims was that he had found inside the archives of his family ancient documents relating to events dating back to up to 317 billion years in the past (stronger than Ron Hubbard!) and enjoyed a crowd of fantastic archeology loving followers.
On october 10th, after he left Shingo, the discovery of Jesus Christ's tomb was announced. By a strange coincidence, as soon as he came back home, Takeuchi digged up the testament of Jesus Christ from his archives!
As for Christ's last testament, it is a bit odd that it could be written since written Japanese did not exist 2,000 years ago. Further, it is written in modern Japanese and signed "Jesus Christ, the father of Christmas" which, at the risk of sounding like a cynic, seems surpassingly odd.
Regardless, the village has turned into a tourist destination. They even have a Christ Festival there in June which reportedly draws quite a crowd. Below is a picture of a souvenir tea cup you can buy and a spot where you can stick your heads in the cutouts and pose as Christ's family for a photo.
By the way, if you think this story is crazy a search on the Tekenouchi Documents will send you off to an even greater whackyland.
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