Beautiful 785-step Japanese shrine sando stairway walk is one very good reason to visit Kagawa

A sweaty, but unforgettable, visit to Kompirasan .

The streets called sando are a unique part of Japanese cityscapes.

Sando are the paths that lead to shrines and temples, and because visitors often have secular needs and desires too, they’re often lined with restaurants, cafes, and souvenir shops.

And while you will find those things on the path you walk along the way to the main building of Shinto shrine Kompirasan in Kagawa Prefecture , its approach also has something that many others don’t: 785 stone steps for you to climb to get there .

For this vertical-component shrine walk, we’re headed to the town of Kotohira , and in fact Kompirasan’s official, formal name is Kotohiragu.

After getting off the train at Kotohira Station (pictured above), it’s about a 10-minute walk to the start of Kompira Omotesando, as this sando is called. ▼ Walking route from Kotohira Station to the start of Kompira Omotesando Sure enough, right away we started seeing shops and restaurants with banners inviting us in for locally made manju dumplings filled with sweet bean paste or some of Kagawa Prefecture’s famous Sanuki udon noodles.

We also walked by a hot spring bathhouse with a free-to-use outdoor foot bath.

The most unusual thing we spotted, though, were buckets filled with walking sticks , which could be rented for 100 yen (US$0.65), with payment and return performed on the honor system. ▼ For this rental stand, you put your 100-yen coin into one of the red piggy banks.

Of course, saving 100 yen here would mean 100 yen more for us to spend on things like Pokémon merch , so we kept our wallet closed and our feet moving.

The first 100 steps or so were no sweat…or at least not very much sweat .

Early on, the ascent to Kompirasan still feels like a stroll in a charming, laidback countryside-adjacent neighborhood.

It wasn’t until we stopped and looked back that we saw how far up into the foothills of Mt.

Zozu we’d risen, with a nice view of the city’s downtown area spreading out in the distance.

After this, though, perspiration would become a persistent theme .