Myouryuji (Ninja Temple)

This guide to Myouryuji, the Ninja Temple in Kanazawa, opens with a puzzle: from outside it reads as an ordinary two-story hall, but inside visitors find four stacked levels no window ever hints at. It traces back to 1643, when Lord Maeda Toshitsune ordered a modest prayer hall turned into a maze of twenty-three rooms and twenty-nine staircases to outwit a shogunate that had capped building heights. You'll hear about the trap doors hidden near the altar and the stairs built to catch an intruder's foot, and about local tradition of a passage running from the temple well toward Kanazawa Castle itself. Stand at that well and look down before you move on.