Koyasan and the monk motel.

Koyasan here we come!
we went to koyasan this weekend. and it was really good. we took out explorer sized packs to work, so that we could take the train striaght to koyasan after work. we booked through the underbround pedways and ctatcombs wich are the namba walk shopping center, and arrived at the train platform just in time to board.

getting to koyaysan was half the fun, the train ride is really scenic, with lots of mountain scenery. mountain scenery in japan, is quite a bit different form mountain scenery in japan. The "mounatins in japan, are like big "foothills" covered in lush green trees, banboo and other flowy, wallowy greens. the forests are much more temperate, and hence the vegetation that is found in the mounatins surrounding koyasan looks like BC rain forest/bamboo forest.

The train wound its way through the mountains and went through tons of tunnels until we came to the last station (cable car station). we took the cable car al the way up the mountain and the higher we got we noticed that the rain became chubbier, and chubbier untill it became fluffy and snow like. So at the top it was snowing. Wild!! our tour package lined every thign up time wise, so we didn't have to wait, for a bus, and then the bus took us straight to our temple lodgings. http://www.fukuchiin.com/index.html . That is the link for the temple. it was cold and snowy when we arrived, and the 1st thing we had to do was take off our shoes (outside) and put them into a communal shoe closet outside the temple. The main building had no central heating, and no insulation. So ya'll can sort of immagine what a wood builing would feel like in -4 snowy weather. sort of dank, and very cool. At the front office area, we were introduced to our tourguide/housekeeping lady named Akiko. She showed us all around the temple, the onsens and to our room.

Our room was amazing, it was super traditional japanese style. imagine a room straight out of a movie (last samurai or crouching tiger hidden dragon.) all tatami, rice paper screen windows, gold and black laquered doors, traditional brush stroke art. the works. loved it. Akiko settled us in and told us how to work the heating. our room was pre heated for us and tea and cakes were waiting for us in the room. Japanese service is impecable. i will write a post soley on japanese service at a later date.

We took a walk around the premises, and looked at all the artifacts in the temple, then we went to the onsen that was in the temple complex. The onsen was my favorite so far in japan. It was half indoor and half out door. The pool spanned and indoor section, and was separaed by glass and the out door portion. The indoor bit was all wood and big stone slabs lined the bottom of the bath. i was the only one in the whole onsen so that was also really nice. The out door onsen was the best thouugh. The weather had been quite warm the previous few days so the cherry blossoms and roses had started to bloom, But tonight it was snowing, and the rose trees that lined the bath had snow on them. It was a surreal evening, absolutely gorgeous.

dinner was served inroom by akiko, and was fully vegetarian. Wich was good for me cause im not a fan of raw fish. dinner was great and consisted of many small tables linked together over flowing with food. love it!!
Akiko also set up our futon beds for us and gave me a travel baggie of toothpaste, so nice.

The next day we got up early early, (5:30 am) to get ready to see the minks doing their morning prayers in the main temple hall. It was an amazing experience. to hear and see monks doing their prayers in a traditional setting. We( guests) had to sit on the floor. As a westerer, i am not very accustomed to sitting on my knees for a long period of time (you try it at home, its hard!!) so sitting like that for the whole service was hard, and me as well as many others were shifting their legs around through out the service. It was a little mesmerising, because of the chanting, i felt like i was hallucinating, maybe from the blood loss in my lower regions, or maybe because i was next to a huge heat lamp and the heat was putting me to sleep. All in all it was great to see buddhism being practiced in a traditional setting. After the service we were taken on a tour around the back sections of the temple where monuments of prominent buddhist people/ saints are kept, alongside offereings to deceased family members and statues of the buddha. It was great. all of the gold and brass in the temple along side the candle lights and insence was mesmersing. dream like is a word that just begins to explain the feeling of being there that morning.

After the morning ceremony, we headed back to our room for japanese style breakfast, and then put on our packs and set off on our hike.

We hiked up a mountain at the north entrace to koyasan to an area that was famous for its rows of tori gates as well as a mountain top shrine. The hike was great, we thought we were lost at some parts, but we kept on heading up and up into the clouds. The shirne was awesome, and we were ina big cloud, so we couldn't see out over the valley, but it was dead cool.

We continued down the mountain, when we ran into a man dressed in a beige suit, fit for an afternoon tea of church service. He directed us towards the parth ways of tori's and to this day im not so sure if he might have been an angel/real or some sort of japanese well dressed apparition. He could have been real though, because the japanese are always impecably dressed and wear dress shoes on all occasions (eg women hiking in high heels)

Once we did the hike we headed back to the town center and walked down the main drag at see all (ALL) the temples. Koya san is temple city, sort of like how vegas is all casinos, koyasan is all temples. The high light of shivs day was for sure doing to the graveyard in Koyasan. Its overwhelmingly huge and filled with massive granite monuments of all the high ups in Japanese buddhism. By comparing the size of the monuments you can graso how prominent./rich each person must have been. Buried in this grave yard are leaders and religious elite of the japanese Shingon school of esoteric buddhism. Its founder is a man named Kobo daishi, and he as well as any one important is buried there.

we spent a good part of the afternoon there taking pictures and walking around (see shivs site) and then we made our way to the touristy parts and got bracelets and a pioneer hello kitty charm for my phone.
great trip, so worth it.