One line of text from Wikipedia was all it took to lure me to the town of Shingo, in south-central Aomori Prefecture. It read: "The village promotes itself as the home of the Grave of Christ after a local legend."

As I was in the neighboring Tohoku-region prefecture of Iwate when I came across that fabulous snippet, curiosity easily got the better of me.

Equipped with a basic tourist map and not much else, I headed for the town of Ichinohe then turned off onto a one-lane road that meandered through idyllic countryside.