Andre and Wendy: Koyasan

Today left from our hotel in Osaka on to Koyasan. We walked to the train station then caught a limited express train to Gokurakubashi, limited express means you pay a bit more and get a reserved seat on a train. Some beautiful views as we travel through the mountains here. Next is a Cable Car ride, that was incredibly steep. Only about 10 minutes long, but that was long enough for me. At the top of the cable car buses are waiting to take us to Koyasan station. Quite an adventure to get here, but so worth it.

Koyasen is the center of Shingon Buddhism, an important Buddhist sect which was introduced to Japan in 805 by Kobo Daishi (also known as Kukai), one of Japan's most significant religious figures. Seems like every couple of minutes you see another temple here, there are 117 temples here, with about 3,000 residents. This is a huge tourist place, well over 1,000,000 visitors each year. Koyasen is also one of the starting points for the Kumano Kodo, similar to the Camino de Santiago, we see lots of hikers around.

There are about 50 temples here that offer overnight services that include a vegetarian dinner and breakfast. We have chosen to stay the night in a temple. Our most expensive night by far for our entire trip, vegetarian meals, sleep on futons, no chairs for meals, and shared bathrooms. What a splurge ha ha.

We got checked in fine, saw our room, then headed out straight away to Okunoin , a huge cemetery a couple of km down the road from where we are staying. When you enter the grounds you follow a 2km pathway through the largest cemetery in Japan with over 200,000 tombstones. The pathway is magical and very moving. All these old tombstones covered in moss from 100's of years ago. The trees lining the pathway were fantastic, huge cedar trees, some aging from 200-600 years old.

We have seen lots of candles and incense burnt for loved ones, but today we saw something different. Visitors make offerings and throw water at statues at the entrance, known as Mizumuke Jizo (Water Covered Jizo) to pray for departed family members. Some people were gentry throwing the water from their scoop at the statues, some were really chucking it at them, quite interesting to watch.

We actually ran into Heather at the cemetery. She is staying a couple of towns awa from us and we had told here about this amazing cemetery. She worked her way there and we were able to meet up as the big trees had numbers on them that were sequential, so we were texting back and forth where we were based on the number on the trees.

After the cemetery we visited a couple more temples, will give details on the pictures when Andre posts them.

Just back from our vegetarian supper. It was very good, but I am definitely not meant to eat on the floor. We did this in Vietnam too, not my favourite thing. Dinner was beautifully presented, I have no idea what some of the things were that we age, but most was good. Some of it was rather chewy, like gum, neither of our favourites.

Talked to a man from the Netherlands that was in a car accident today with a cab. Didn't hear all the details but he said it wasn't his fault. He was really looking forward to what they call a bath/shower, Andre checked it out, it is a stool that you sit on and the shower comes out. I think I'll wait until tomorrow when we are back at a hotel.

Went for a short walk after supper around the block and checked out the temple across the street. We really wanted to do a tour of the cemetery at night but timing just didn't work out, they lock the doors here 9:00PM.

Steps 23,730 / 15 kms