Koyasan

Day 245 – OK, no meat, but no garlic?

Breakfast at Super Hotel consisted of a whole heap of fairly unidentifiable bread products, tasty anyway.  From there it was back on the train, then another train, then a funicular and finally a bus, to get us to the hilltop town of Koyasan, most famous for it’s monastery lodgings and temples.

Heading up the funicular, the aisle is a staircase.

After heading into the tourist office to secure lodgings for the night at one of the local temples (just turning up to your accommodation in Japan without a reservation is not the done thing!), we deposited Erin’s backpack in a locker and went for a walk around Danjo Garan and up to the Daimon Gate.

Dai-to (Great Pagoda), which houses the “Cosmic Buddha”.

Sai-to, the Western Pagoda, nestled in amongst the woods. 

Check-in at our temple, Haryo-in, was strictly between 4pm and 5pm, though we observed other people who had no problems arriving a bit late.  We were shown to our room by a monk who had substantial difficulty walking and could only use one arm.  We later learned that he had suffered a stroke at a young age, doctors had told him he would not walk, but through discipline and faith living in the temple he had learned to walk again.  Our room was fairly simple with tatami mats on the floor, our futons tucked into a wardrobe, a small table with tea in the centre of the room and a shrine in the corner.

At 5:30pm dinner was served and Erin was especially excited to try ‘shojin ryori’, which is Buddhist vegetarian food with no meat, fish, onions or garlic.  We were seated on the floor at little individual tables and we and the other guests nervously looked at each other to work out what manners were required of us.  It turned out not to be too difficult and the food was wholesome but a little bland (no wonder, we put garlic in everything!).

 

Lights out was at 10pm, like being on school camp.  So after dinner, deciding there was probably not much night life in a town full of monasteries, we just hung out until bedtime.

Day 246 – Shrine fashion

Despite our adversity to early starts we got up in time to attend the morning Buddhist prayer.  It went for about half an hour and afterwards one of the monks (the same one who had looked after us yesterday) told us a bit about the ceremony and his own personal background.

The temple’s shrine, where the morning prayer was held.

After breakfast, a similar affair to dinner, we headed back down to store Erin’s pack before heading to Oku-no-in, a cemetery temple, for a walk around.  The grounds are quite extensive, and very majestic with towering trees and an array of moss covered shrines.

Some shrine fashion that Erin took quite a liking to.

In the ‘no photo’ section of the grounds there is Miroku-ishi, a small wooden building housing a sacred stone.  Pilgrims reach through holes in the side of the building to try and lift the stone onto a small ledge.  It is said that the heavier the stone the heavier your sins.  Needless to say I could easily lift the stone onto the ledge, whilst Erin couldn’t (nothing to do with our respective arm strength of course!).

From Koyasan it was back onto the public transport merry-go-round for the bus, funicular, five trains and the shinkansen to Nagoya where one of Japan’s four yearly Sumo competitions was in full swing.

The train map for the local Japan Rail lines, this is only one company and is fairly simple in comparison to some other areas of Japan!

For dinner we headed to a chain of izakayas (Japanese pubs) called Yamachan.  Erin’s tofu salad was delicious but the rest of our food came in disappointingly small proportions.  On the wall they had a ‘Miso Beer’ advertised, but it was A$10 a bottle, so I decided to hunt it down in a bottle shop later. [Two weeks later still no luck :-(  ]