Takatsu Jinja Torii

 I went through the torii and started up a long flight of stairs. Almost immediately I was greeted by a long series of torii through which the stairs passed.

 One of the red painted wooden torii had collapsed and someone had sawed the piece in short sections and piled them beside the stairs.

At this point the stairs became very steep and there was a wire railing along the side so you could use your arms to help with the climb. The stairs are interesting. Apparently when the shrine was first built, this was a simple dirt path. Then someone added stone stairs in the steep places, gradually filling all the spaces of that it was all stairs. The concrete was added to keep the stones from moving and to provide firm flat places around the stairs. Also concrete blocks were placed in front of some of the taller stairs, some embedded in the concrete and some just placed on top of it. At this point I was beginning to get a bit tired, having climbed well over a hundred stairs. I also noticed that along the sides of the trail there were huge boulders, something that had not been present at the lower levels.