Sonohyan-utaki Ishimon (Stone gate of the Sonohyan Shrine)

This guide to the Sonohyan-utaki Ishimon stone gate in Okinawa opens with a puzzle: two carved stone doors, hinged but never meant to open, set into a single limestone frame. It traces the gate back to 1519, when King Sho Shin of the Ryukyu Kingdom raised it as a threshold for his own prayers before leaving Shuri Castle, and to the sacred grove behind it, once used for the initiation of the kikoe ogimi, the kingdom's highest priestess. You'll hear about the karahafu roofline and coral-limestone walls that mix Japanese and Chinese influence, and about the twentieth-century storm that this gate and its independent kingdom barely lived through. Look for the trees still standing just beyond the doors.