Miyajima to Koyasan

In our own special Japanese version of train, planes and automobiles, today's travel journey from Miyajima to the mountain Buddhist village of Koyasan required us to walk to the ferry, then take the ferry across to the mainland, then catch a local train, then a shinkansen from Hiroshima to Osaka, then catch a metro subway, then transfer to a local train, then switch over to another train, then transfer onto a funicular to head vertically up a mountain, then get on a bus into Koyasan proper, fore walking the last then few hundred metres to our Buddhist monastery where we are staying the night. The modern day version of a one day pilgrimage?

And despite an extraordinary number of connections, the whole thing went incredibly smoothly thanks to the precision of Japanese public transport and the voodoo magic that is google maps.

Koyasan is the centre of Buddhist study and is a major monastic complex, where 50-60 of them offer overnight stays for visitors, offering meditation, Buddhist cuisine and sutra copying. We are not doing the sutra copying.

After dropping off our luggage and getting an early check-in tour by a young monk, we headed off to the far end of Koyasan at the suggestion of Chat GPT. Here we wandered around the Danjo Baran Complex with many large (and I mean large!) impressive temples. Most were originally built in around 816 or thereabouts, but have been subject to fires and therefore been rebuilt many times. With so many wooden structures in Japan, we can certainly see the importance of a constant water source and the local fire brigade in each village. We paid to go to the main temple (Daito) which contained a large main Buddha and was surrounded by four other Buddhas. No photography, but suffice they had a beautiful golden glow. There was a monk giving a tour whilst we were in there so they did some praying/chanting which was lovely.

We then walked the entire length of the village back to the one thing I have been very excited to see which was the Okunoin Cemetery. There are over 200,000 gravestones and monuments and it is 2km long. In particular, I have wanted to walk through it in the evening. Luckily it gets dark early in winter, so we got to walk in during daylight and out during twilight just as it started to have light misty rain. Definitely worth getting wet for! The mausoleum of the founding esoteric Buddhist monk (Kobo Daishi) was at the end. It too was a visual feast for the senses, surrounded by centuries old cedar trees and the main pavilion had hundreds or orange lanterns lit. No photos allowed.

Dinner was at 6pm in the dining hall, seated on tatami. This was a traditional washoku kaiseki meal which also was spectacular to look at and very tasty. At 7.30pm we went to the main hall for 20 minutes of meditation. We were rugged up but luckily I was also sitting right next to a kerosene heater. It was toasty, and needed to be as it is freezing here tonight, but I think I'm lucky my polar fleece didn't spontaneously combust. It was hard to sit still for that amount of time because I'm pretty sure my hip was about to pop out of its socket. Old lady Rinetto was offered a stool by the young monk and was all indignant that he thought she was old. I reckon I'll use the stool at the morning ceremony tomorrow so I can walk afterwards 🤫

Whilst we were at dinner, our futons were made up and come with a much needed electric blanket. We did a trip to the onsen to bathe and warm up and are now tucked up in med. The toilet is at the opposite end of the complex, so I'm now restricting water so I don't need to brave the cold hallways again until tomorrow morning.Read more