Korinbo

This guide to the Korinbo crossing in Kanazawa opens with a real estate puzzle: for fifteen years through 2009 this exact intersection held the priciest land in Ishikawa prefecture, before losing that title almost overnight. To explain why, it goes back roughly four centuries to a wandering monk, a pharmacist's household he married into, and an ailing lord's eyes. Merchants clustered around that story for generations, and a clothing store that opened here in 1903 later grew into the department store still standing at the crossing today.