Angie and Ash's Visit (Part 5 -final)

We spent the next day of Angie and Ash's visit on the train to Mt. Koya and had our first adventure before even leaving Tokyo. To get all the way to Mt. Koya by 5:30 p.m. when dinner was served, we had to leave Tokyo during morning rush hour. What a nightmare that was! We experienced first hand the white gloved train conductors pushing people (us and our suitcases) into crammed train cars. Reminded me a lot of matatus in Kenya! We ended up having to separate because we couldn’t all fit into the same train car, so I took a later train, which stopped at a different platform at the next station. After 20 minutes of trying to find each other at another Tokyo train station, we finally met up again, and settled in another train for a more comfortable ride south.
After countless hours on the train and eight transfers, including a cable car up the mountain, we finally arrived at Mt. Koya.

We stayed at Rengejoin Temple where the head priest’s mother spoke English. What an extraordinary life story she told us over dinner. She is 88 years (a very young 88!) and told us about how she went to Tokyo to study English at university as a young woman. Of course, this was during a time when women didn’t go to university, and IF they did, it was to study domestic sciences. She returned to Mt. Koya after graduating. All of the young men were off fighting the war, so after some time, she married the head priest of Rengejoin temple. After the war, the temple was in ruins, and there was very little food available. But eventually they prospered and had two sons, the elder of which is now the head priest at the temple. (The position of head priest is passed down father to son.)

The temple had a beautiful rock garden that the head priest was raking (a light rain had disturbed the design) and a lovely garden with a pond.

Before dinner we had to attend a 40 minute meditation service, which was rather long for Angie and me. Ash enjoyed it and told us over dinner how his grandfather used to make him meditate as a child and even threatened him with “meditation camp”. Dinner itself, while vegetarian, was still typically Japanese with many unidentifiable things.

As instructed, after dinner we bathed in the Japanese style bathroom, and then retired to our adjoining rooms for an early night.

We were required to attend a 6 a.m. morning service before breakfast. The morning service was chanting, which while interesting, was a little long for me, half asleep and hungry from not having eaten much of my dinner the night before. Breakfast was also typically Japanese, rice, miso soup, and pickles, and we quickly decided our first stop of the day would be to supplement breakfast with some “normal” food.
We spent the day exploring Koya-san (Mt. Koya) and really enjoyed the little mountain-top town. There are 117 temples in this town of 7,000 people. The town is the headquarters of the Shingon Buddhism sect established by Kobo Daishi (Kukai).

What we learned about the founding of Koya-san: In 804, Kobo Daishi (not his name then) went to China for Buddhist training. From China he threw some sort of shiny Buddhist implement towards Japan. When he returned to Japan in 806, he went looking for a place to establish the new sect of Buddhism. He met a hunter with his two dogs in the woods and asked the hunter if he knew of a good place for his temple site. The hunter told him he had seen something sparkling in the trees of a mountain. Kobo Daishi went up that mountain, and sure enough, there, hanging in a pine tree, was the golden implement he had thrown from China. Imagine that. So he decided that was a sign to establish his sect there and it became Koya-san. The descendent of the pine tree which caught the implement is encircled by a fence and revered.
We visited several temples and pagodas before having lunch and then wandering on to the famous Okunoin cemetery. There are an estimated half million tombs here, marked by mossy stone statues. We enjoyed wandering along the path and snapping lots of photos.
At the end of the day, we hopped back on the trains and came to Himeji. Saturday was spent at the castle, but unfortunately the festival we had hoped to catch that day was postponed due to rain. The next day Angie and Ash headed off to spend a week sightseeing on their own.