Blogs from Koyasan, Wakayama, Japan, Asia
April 8th 2012
We only have a week and a half left in Japan, but we've done so much since my last blog! It's been non-stop. Everywhere is so different, and we have seen some really interesting places (although I'm still going to get mixed up between all the cities and the temples when I look at my photos!). Since the last blog, in Kamakura, we headed next to Nagoya, where we stayed only to go to Tsumago and Magome the following day, and do a walking trail through the forest (and snow!) and little old houses in the mountains. There were bells every few hundred metres to ring in order to scare off bears - we read a sign before we started saying that bears had been reported in the area in the news, but no one had ... read more
Koyasan: Snow on Cedar Trees, Temples and Buddhas
Published: January 5th 2011Asia » Japan » Wakayama » Koyasan
January 5th 2011
Just came back from Fukuoka, and headed straight to Koyasan the next day. Still on my New year holiday, and luckily kiddie daycare is already back and running. So we sent our kids to the daycare for the day, and finally made the journey to the famous Mt. Koya. The place is 860 meters above sea level and dotted with quite a number of World Heritage Sites pertaining to Esoteric practice of Shingo Buddhism, which has a large following all over Japan. I always thought of visiting this place, but always had a change of plans at the last minute. I was thinking that maybe I wouldn't experience its beauty at the same level as those who are practicing the faith. But, I was so wrong. The place is completely a world on its own. The ... read more
October 30th 2009
Shukubo experiences at Mount Koya, or Kōya-san (高野山), have been described in this forum more often, but I enjoyed my stay so much that I feel obliged to describe my own experience. The Okunoin Cemetery, Kongobuji Temple with the Banryutei rock garden and the area around the Konpon Daitō which make up the main sites in Mt Koya all are fabulous and have all well deserved entries in this forum and therefore I want to focus mainly on our temple lodging, or shukubo, experience. We had booked the Sanboin shukubo which has a 1200-year history via their webpage and arrived early in the morning, dropped off our luggage and headed out to see the sights. We returned around 4PM, the check-in time and were shown to our room by a monk. The room turned out to ... read more
July 9th 2009
We get the shinkansen at 8:15 from Hiroshima to Osaka, we buy some little pastries and ice coffee for the journey, very civilised. I love these trains. In Osaka we store our big bags in a locker and take the city loop train around to a station south of the city where we buy a combined train, cable car and bus ticket to get to Koyasan. It's very humid and we're glad not to be carrying our big bags, we have lunch at a brilliant, really cheap and tasty stand up noodle joint at the station - slurpy slurpy. We have to take 2 more trains to get to the cable car at the base of Koyasan, the urban areas thin out a bit on the way out and we see rural Japan for the first ... read more
May 8th 2009
Me again. Apologies for the profusion of words and pictures. I hope you'll agree, though, the photos at least are worth the time... We’re slowly ticking off ‘must-see’ places in Japan. This one is…Koya-san, an area of some beauty, relevance and reverence on the top of a mountain in Wakayama Prefecture. It was established in 816 by Kobadaishi, a Japanese fellow who studied Buddhism in China and subsequently brought it back. Since then, Koya-san has developed into perhaps the pre-eminent Buddhist site in the country. There are hundreds of temples and shrines, and other than a few bits, appears relatively untouched by the modernity and industrialisation that blights/lights the rest of Japan. It’s an incredibly tranquil place. To get there, it takes about 90 minutes by fast train from Osaka, followed by a cable car on ... read more
March 7th 2009
We woke up early and got ready for our first move. Traveling in a large group can prove difficult if everyone doesn't stick to the plan. We had a great group though and I wasn't too worried. We met in the lobby to check out and make our way to the train station. I loved Axel, our group leader, for one reason...he was as addicted to coffee as I am, so every morning move included a coffee shop stop! My kind of guy!! We dragged our bags to the station and onto a train heading toward the Wakayama prefecture, where we were to catch a cable car up to Koyasan. Mount Koya (Koyasan) is the center of Shingon Buddhism, a Buddhist sect that was introduced to Japan in 805 by Kobo Daishi, one of the most ... read more
December 17th 2008
Konichiwa! The second half of our trip was just as fun and exciting as the last. We headed off to Koyasan by train. Heading into this beautiful country was finally what I wanted. I realized that Tokyo and Osaka were nice, but very built up and urbanized. I was looking for more green, and places that have the traditional Japanese looking roof tops. Koyasan provided just that. It's located up in the mountains, and the population was a lot less. We were able to stay overnight at a temple! Our room had traditional floor type furniture, and to our delight, a space heater! After dropping off our bags, we went walking around town, and through a beautiful cemetery. The head stones and plots were very elaborate, and it was set in a gorgeous tall Forrest (I'll ... read more
October 3rd 2008
freitag, 03.10.08 am montag, bereits am morgen im bett, höre ich den regen draussen - sch....! denn genau an diesem montag fahre ich mit dem zug nach koya-san - gemäss schriftlichem und mündlichem reiseführer eine superschöne strecke im regen. na ja, so schlimm war es gar nicht - vor allem der letzte teil von hashimoto über gokurakubashi nach koya-san ist wirklich wundervoll, zuerst ein schmalspurbähnli und dann eine standseilbahn! die steilen mit einer art tannen und bambus bewachsenen hänge sind mystisch von nebelschwaden umgeben, dazu ein feiner nieselregen - eigentlich eine ganz schöne stimmung. und schliesslich bin ich im zug ja im trockenen und im fukuchi-in gibt es mehrere heisse bäder, die ich dann auch vor dem nachtessen noch intensiv nutze... der fukuchi-in ist ein shukubo, d.h. ein tempel, der übernachtungsmöglichkeiten für pilger und touristen anbiet ... read more
May 31st 2008
Japanese Vocab: GW: Golden Week shuriken: ninja stars nihon-ichi: number one in Japan yasumi: break, vacation, holiday onsen: public bath house/hot spring with communal showers and large communal baths So in California I remember that up until high school, we had this little week long break (outside of winter break) in February, always around my birthday and President's Day, that was usually called "Ski Week" or something. I mean, officially it was probably called President's Day/Week or something completely bogus like that, but it was basically a week off so people could go out skiing in Tahoe and such. Here in Japan, we have Golden Week, where they line up a couple of holidays in a row to take out most of the week so families can travel. The government even helps out by subsidizing gas ... read more
