MAGICAL69

On the rugged northern coast of Yamaguchi Prefecture, a tunnel of 123 bright red torii gates snakes down a green cliff straight toward the crashing blue waves of the Sea of Japan. This is Motonosumi Shrine. Below the cliff, ocean swells slam into an underwater cave in the basalt rock and shoot plumes of white spray up to a hundred feet into the air, a phenomenon locals call the Dragon Palace Geyser. In 1955, a local fisherman named Hitoshi Okamura had a dream in which a white fox spirit appeared and asked him to build a shrine on this cliff. Over a ten-year period, neighbors and fishermen donated 123 gates, one by one, spanning more than three hundred feet down the headland. But when you walk to the massive final gate at the top of the path, you will see grown adults standing in a circle, looking straight up at the sky and throwing coins into the air. At every other shrine in Japan, the wooden donation box sits on the ground in front of the altar. Here, the priest mounted the donation box five meters up in the center of the top crossbeam of the giant gate. If you can toss a coin sixteen feet straight up into the wind and hear it clink inside the box, legend says your wish is guaranteed to come true. Even the gods in Japan appreciate a good arm.