Ogamiyama Shrine Okunomiya

Ogamiyama Shrine Okunomiya sits in Tottori the way most sacred sites in Japan do: unhurried, and easy to rush past if you don't know to slow down.

The approach to the mountain shrine of Ogamiyama is seven hundred metres of natural stone laid as paving — the longest stone-paved shrine approach in Japan. It was built when Daisen was a centre of cattle markets and mountain worship, and it climbs through cedar to a shrine hall that is the largest gongen-zukuri structure in the country.

The hall, its offering hall and its worship hall are all nationally designated Important Cultural Properties, and the interior is finished in white sandalwood lacquer on a scale unmatched anywhere in Japan, with painted panels and carving throughout. There is also a gate that faces backwards — the sakamon, taken from a temple and reinstalled the wrong way round, which nobody has corrected. It is fifteen minutes on foot up from the Daisen-ji inns.