Kobe

Why it matters: established in April 2002 by Hyogo Prefecture to preserve and pass on what the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake taught a city that lost over 6,400 people, the DRI is both a public museum and a working think tank that trains disaster-response professionals and feeds research into policy worldwide. The hard part is the 4th floor, where a short film puts you inside 5:46am on 17 January 1995; the human part is the Storytellers’ Corner on the 3rd, where survivors sit and tell you what that morning was actually like. Survivor testimony videos are subtitled in seven languages including English, and the learning tables run in English, Chinese and Korean. Practical tip: admission is free on the 17th of every month – the date the quake struck – and the museum is closed Mondays, so plan around both.