Koya-san

Up at 5:30AM to watch the monks pray but unfortunately we got there two minutes too late and the door was already closed. We’ll try again tomorrow.

The highlight of Koya-san is Okuno-in, a vast cemetery with 100,000 tombs nestled among 300 year old cedars. It was quite large and felt like something out of the “Lord of the Rings” movies.


The afternoon was spent touring more temples and then some more temples. We’re pretty much templed-out. The nice part was that everything was absolutely deserted.

After lunch, Jessica headed back to the hotel whilst Andrew got adventurous and experienced Jukia, a formal ceremony for taking refuge in the Buddha, which was a little too “real” for comfort. Then he tried his hand at Shakyo (sutra copying) which started off relaxing but got old fast – it took almost an hour to copy the entire thing. After trying for almost an entire 90 minutes, Andrew gave up on trying to attain enlightenment.

Koya-san has no fewer touristy spots than anywhere we’ve gone so far, but once you’ve done them there is NOTHING TO DO! No internet, no TV, no bar, nothin’. We killed a bit of time using the outdoor onsens in our temple but after that ended up killing time playing Scrabble on the iPhone and dreading yet another tofu dinner. Luckily, Jessica had the bright idea of buying some pot-noodles from the grocery store and using the hot water they provided for tea.

Tomorrow off to Nara.