Above: Temple lanterns at night on Koya-san

This summer, I stayed overnight at a temple on Koya-san in the Wakayama mountains. Koya-san, or Mount Koya, is one of Japan's holiest mountains. It has over 100 temples and is the world center of Shingon Buddhism.

A friend and I went in mid-July and stayed at Eko-in temple, one of the oldest temples on Koya-san.

Lonely Planet described Eko-in as being run by “hip young monks.” The monks were indeed hip, friendly, and quite dashing, particularly since many of them walk around in sleeveless t-shirts and Crocs. But more on that later.

Part of the fun of going to Koya-san is the train ride there. Koya-san is 120 kilometers south of Kyoto, and requires quite a few train changes. Including time spent waiting for (and missing) trains, it took us well over three hours of train travel time to get to Gokurabashi station at the base of the mountain, where you take a cable car to the top.

The final train ride, from Hashimoto, Wakayama, to Gokurabashi, was absolutely beautiful. We passed by rural rice paddies, which are so green in the summer that, from far away, they look like cartoon grass.

Then, the train began to wind through the mountains—high, deep green mountains that are so densely full of trees that it’s hard to tell where one tree stops and another begins.

The view was hard to capture on my camera, but here's where the mountains started (they got much taller and harder to take pictures of as we progressed).

Once we got to Gokurabashi, we took a cable car up the mountain to Koya-san station. It was a fun, steep ride (think Lombard Street in San Francisco).

After arriving, we ate a quick lunch near the station—beef udon, which filled us up, but was nothing to call home about:

From the station, we took a 10-minute bus ride to town, where we walked to Eko-in. Although Eko-in is located on a busy main street of Koya-san (as, too, are many other temples on Koya-san), its temple buildings are set back from the street, so that our room was quiet and peaceful.

The room was a simple but comfortable tatami room, with a view of a garden outside.

Sinks, toilets, and baths were communal.

We arrived at Eko-in just in time for their afternoon meditation session, held in a separate wooden building set above the temple grounds, with a lovely view of the surrounding gardens and greenery.

The session was led in Japanese by one of the Eko-in monks; another (very handsome*) monk who spoke English sat in the back of the room with my friend and me, and he translated the monk’s instructions to us. After the initial instructions, the monks left and we meditated by ourselves in the room, for about fifteen minutes, before they returned to close the session.

I occasionally practice meditation, but it was my first time attending a meditation session in Japan; as I had expected and hoped, it was a peaceful and restorative experience.

One of my favorite parts of staying at the temple was eating its shojin ryori, or Buddhist vegetarian food. Most, if not all, temples on Koya-san will serve shojin ryori to their guests. Ours was served in our room, promptly at 5:30PM.

The dishes were elaborate and delicious, similar in look to the dishes I’ve eaten before at ryokan, or traditional Japanese inns, but without any meat, fish, garlic, or onions, which are thought to excite the system.

The Koya-san area is known for its sesame and sesame tofu, or goma dofu, which is tofu made with sesame paste (above, top left). The goma dofu we ate was delicious—soft and pliant to the teeth, with a sweet taste of sesame.

We also ate vinegared kelp (above, middle), which I’m not as big a fan of. Its combined fishy and vinegary flavors aren’t up my alley, although I’ve heard it’s very nutritious. We also ate tempura vegetables (above, top right)—including tempura seaweed, yum!

We each even got a second tray of dishes, with assorted tofu appetizers, cold somen noodles with a dipping sauce, and fresh fruit.

We also ate this miso soup with decorative floating rice puffs which looked like candy.

After dinner, we went to the nearby Oku-no-in cemetery, the most famous Buddhist cemetery in Japan. What’s it like to walk through a 1000-year-old graveyard at dusk? Find out about my creepy experience in the next post.

*Note: A bit of trivia--in Japan, monks and nuns are allowed to marry! This makes my checking out monks feel, well, less wrong.

 

 

Leaf-peeping season in Japan is, sadly, over. I thought this would be a good time to post some more pictures I took during my leaf-peeping outings that, for one reason or another, were not up to my (admittedly perfectionistic) standards, and so didn’t go into my original posts.

In addition to visiting Takao, Ishiyama-dera, and Arashiyama, I also visited the Hiyoshi Taisha shrine for leaf-peeping.

Hiyoshi Taisha is at the base of Mt. Hiei, north of Kyoto. Unfortunately, the day that I visited, it was raining and bitterly cold, and my photos ended up being all invariably blurry--which makes for interesting moody-type pictures, but not much clarity. Some of them still struck me, though, so here they are.

In spite of the rain and cold that day, the red maple leaf colors were still stunning. Some of the falling red leaves even ended up sticking to the top of my umbrella--I could see their leafy silhouettes from the underside of the umbrella--which I like to think is a lucky sign.

Below: Pictures from Hiyoshi Taisha, Ishiyama-dera, and the bamboo forest in Arashiyama.

A few weeks ago—on Halloween day, in fact—I went on one of the most beautiful hikes I’ve ever been on, in the Kiso Valley. The Kiso Valley is nestled among the Japanese Alps in Nagano prefecture.

A friend and I hiked from the town of Magome to the town of Tsumago, on the old Nakasendo highway (an ancient road that connected Tokyo to Kyoto—think of the Via Appia in ancient Rome, but substitute udon for whatever it is that Romans ate).

Both Magome and Tsumago are historic, carefully restored post-towns, resting points along the Nakasendo highway for travelers during the Edo era. The hike between them was only about 2.5 hours long (my kind of hike!), on well-maintained trails, and took us through forests and farmland, up and down through a mountain pass, and past waterfalls and small sleepy neighborhoods. The trees were not as red as they were in my last post in Takao, but they were, nevertheless, oh-so-pretty in their lushness and greenness.

Magome is bigger and more bustling than Tsumago. Its main street was full of craft shops, snack shops, restaurants, and tourists.

It was a sunny day, and even the man-sized Hello Kitty rice crackers on display seemed to smile at me (maybe because they were, in fact, smiling. Okay, not the Hello Kitty one, but the Doraemon one most definitely).

Before starting any hike, it's essential to eat right. And what better way to eat before a hike than with soba? (Actually, udon would be better, but soba seems to be much more common in the Nagano area.) The soba we had was delicious, complete with an egg, mushrooms, seaweed, and a pureed mixture of yam that you pour into the soba noodles and makes the soup strangely fizzy.

Shortly after we left Magome, we went up one section of the trail that was paved with red and white stones. It took me a second before realizing that they had paved the path to look like it was covered with cherry blossom petals.

This is the kind of thing that just gets me about Japan—there is so much care taken to make things beautiful in a detailed, thoughtful way. Being lucky enough to come from a gorgeous part of California, I've often seen a lot of natural beauty, but not such meticulous beauty. Did I mention that, at the Ginkaku-ji temple in Kyoto a few weeks ago, I saw a man dusting the rocks in the Zen garden?

Along the hike, we passed by waterfalls and streams and crossed wooden bridges.

Speaking of detail and thoughtfulness, we also passed by a wooden fountain, complete with a set of porcelain cups, where you could stop for water.

Tsumago is a tiny, quaint town, and perhaps because of its size and the smaller number of tourists there--it was almost dusk by the time we arrived--it felt more personal than Magome. We stayed for a night at a historic ryokan, Matsushiro-ya, which first opened in 1804.

Being historic and traditional, the inn had tatami rooms complete with sliding paper doors (note: paper makes for thin walls).

Our stay included dinner and breakfast. Dinner, as expected, was the more elaborate of the two meals—including local specialties such as carp sashimi, river fish with a glazed sauce (as well as miscellaneous fish parts stuffed inside it), and numerous smaller appetizers of tofu and preserved vegetables.

Similar to what I had in Takao, there was also an unhappy-looking grilled, salted river fish pouting at me.

The food was not the best I’ve had in Japan, but decent and filling in a home-style, yet still elaborate sort of way.

After dinner, we went outside to explore Tsumago by night. The main street was deserted, dark, and cold. It was quiet, except for the occasional tourists we passed, some of whom wore yukata and clanking wooden clogs, or geta, from whichever ryokan they were staying at. It felt peaceful, and yet spooky, too. My camera didn't do too well capturing the dark street, but it did capture the street lanterns.

The inn owner also gave us a lantern to light our way.

The next day, I took a morning walk in Tsumago by myself. It was misty and drizzly, and the shop owners were just beginning to start their day. I felt like I had the whole town to myself.

When we left Tsumago, we hiked to the nearby town of Nagiso to take the train home. The trail passed right through the grounds of a Buddhist temple. We stopped there to rest and just to admire the autumn scenery and the mountains nearby.

I've been in Japan for nearly four months now. The weather is changing to an intense cold, and homesickness sometimes feels just around the corner. But having quiet moments in hidden temples--that makes up just one of the unanticipated reasons I came here on this adventure.

Below: Pictures from my morning walk in Tsumago and also more hiking pictures.

Last weekend, I went to the village of Takao, in the mountains of northwest Kyoto. It’s the start of leaf-peeping season in the Kansai region, so I went with a friend to Takao to visit three temples that are famous for their autumn leaves.

Autumn leaf-peeping, especially of the gorgeous Japanese maple trees—known as momiji in Japanese--is a major past-time in Japan. Temples and parks become crowded at this time of year with hordes of spectators eager to see the vibrant reds and oranges of the momiji. There are even websites with autumn leaf status reports that you can view. My aunt, who is a frequent traveler to Japan, told me that even the local newspapers will feature regular autumn leaf updates. But being currently illiterate, I haven’t checked a newspaper yet to confirm this!

The temples we visited were: Kozan-ji, Jingo-ji, and Saimyo-ji. Kozan-ji is a series of temple buildings spread at multiple levels along a mountainside, with crumbling stone stairways and long stone paths connecting you between the buildings. The trees are so tall and dense there, that it felt more like I was in a forest than that I was visiting a temple in a forest.

The leaves have only just started changing at Kozan-ji, so there was mostly greenery, but what a glorious green they were.

Kozan-ji also happens to feature a set of scrolls that are known as the world’s first manga. (They show happy rabbits, frogs, and monkeys carousing with each other, if you must know. And not carousing in that way.)

The scrolls are housed in a very traditional-looking wooden building (that's my technical term for it) with lovely greenery surrounding it.

Jingo-ji is supposed to be the most famous of the three temples in Takao, but I have to say it was my least favorite in terms of scenery. Its buildings are spread out through a wide, open (i.e. not very tree-filled) area.

The trees around there—at least in the parts that we saw—weren’t dense enough or orange enough for good picture-taking. The climb to Jingo-ji, though, was an excellent way to work off lunch. There are a good few sets of long, steep stone steps that take you up a mountain before you reach the temple.

You do pass by a few udon restaurants on the way, though, which pretty much makes up for everything.

My favorite temple of the three was Saimyo-ji. The scenery there was so beautiful, that I found myself saying over and over again, “This is so beautiful, this is so beautiful” and feeling completely unsatisfied with that word. The greens and oranges and reds there were simply dazzling. And it wasn’t even the height of the fall foliage season yet!

Saimyo-ji also felt the most intimate out of the three temples. All of its temple buildings are close together in a fairly small, park-like area, with a friendly dirt path leading you through the temple grounds.

One of the highlights of the day was our lunch at a traditional restaurant by the river in Takao. We found the restaurant at random on our way to Saimyo-ji—which is really one of my favorite ways to figure out where to eat when traveling, through stumbling. We ate in one of the restaurant’s rustic wooden buildings overlooking the river (the restaurant has a handful of these small buildings by the river; each building is the size of a small room and has one wall of sliding doors that is left open to let in the air). We sat on the tatami floor, by large, open windows, with a view of the maple trees and the rushing water below.

Lunch was a multi-course feast of sweet river trout in a glazed sauce, a small salted fish that kept staring grudgingly at me, small appetizers (preserved veggies, tofu, the usual), and some seasonal small plates, including unagi over rice in a hollowed-out section of bamboo. The food, the river, the tatami, the maple trees—all gave me one of those, “OMFG, I really am in Japan” moments, where I want to laugh and kind of want to weep—in a very joyous way—at the same time.

After lunch, we took pictures around the paths near the restaurant—which was yet another one of my favorite parts of the day.

Below: Pictures from near the restaurant and also more pictures from Saimyo-ji