Last Friday, on a whim, I decided to take a train down to the head of a 23km trail (my map here is a terrible estimation of its actual path) that would take myself and two friends to the town of Koya, the heart of a sect of Buddhism called Shingon. The “Choseki Stupa Route”, starting at the Jison-in Shinto shrine on the edge of the town of Kudoyama, was used by ancient pilgrims journeying to Koya.

Near the start of the route we found this awesome scene. Brilliantly blue bamboo trees lined both sides of the path, which we shuffled along, trying to fully appreciate the spectacle. Walking among such beautiful scenery, the whole time we all discussed whether it was better to carry a camera or not; When you’re there, it’s hard to be “in the moment”, distracted from the actual experience while considering the best angle, f-stop, and shutter speed to capture what you want to remember and show to others. But it’s trivial to worry about such a tired issue when, in the end, you’re in the middle of an amazing and culturally rich place that just being there should be enough.

…and if I hadn’t brought my camera, I might not remember, and certainly couldn’t share, interesting little places like the shrine at this bend in the trail:

Here, a tori gate marks the spot of a small shrine. Among other representations of Shinto gods was this fellow:

This one I liked especially because he looked to have been made out of clay by an individual. I nearly missed him, perched on a tiny ledge on a fairly inconspicuous boulder at the side of the path. Apparently others had noticed him as well, considering the stash of coins he’d earned for his diligent praying. One of my travel mates suggested he looks like a particular kami meant to protect the souls of aborted babies. He’s usually represented by an upturned face, praying hands, and a large grin. (Also, here’s a shot of an anthropomorphic root I liked)

At one peak we were met with this view, of another town nestled into the hills bordering Koya. The whole area was accessible by only one train line and one (frighteningly narrow and twisted) 2-lane road.

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Mosquitoes are a fact of life in this region. They manage to find their ways into any nook of any building, and concentrate at a rate of at least one per cubic meter outdoors, regardless of whether there are any animals or people around. They seem to lie in wait like a covert air-force, shouting sub-sonic chirps to direct one another to wherever some deliciously, meaty human has been spotted. Wearing long sleeves and pants I’ve been bitten three times on the neck in a single visit to the restroom (at the very center of our dorm building), once in the stall and twice while washing my hands. By now, I can deal with the mosquitoes. But these things…

…I just don’t know what to make of. All three of us oblivious travelers nearly smacked our faces into this one’s web. They look pretty menacing but they’re honestly less frightening than the dancing spiders, who find a dark recess in which to jump and wiggle incessantly. It’s very creepy to find one of those things.

By the end of the night hiking, the other two had dropped off from exhaustion but I decided to trek it the rest of the way to stay a night in a Buddhist temple.

Exhausted from roughly 25km of hiking through mountains, and up and down steep towns on their faces, and having started the day still tired from only 4 hours of sleep, I wasn’t going to stop at the bottom of Koyasan and miss seeing at least a bit of the town. So I caught the cable car up to the information center at the top, took a bus to a phone booth and booked a night at Muryukoin temple. As soon as I arrived, two happy monks greeted me. One brought candied peanuts and tea to my room, and another brought this…

(You might want to click-through to Flickr to read the text better. Also, I should have opened everything up for the picture, but I was flat exhausted and didn’t think about it.)

There’s a special name for this cuisine but I haven’t the time to look it up right now. It’s all vegetarian, and one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten. It was absolutely extravagant, and as the monks do, I ate alone it in the beautiful traditional bedroom, just amazed at the work put into it. Then I had a nice bath in the communal bathroom, where I met four soon-to-be monks studying at Koyasan University. They were very friendly as were all the monks, and as Japanese people tend to be in general. I woke at 5 the next morning to ready for the morning meditation ritual, which took place in the Dondo. The temple room is an impressively ornate chamber filled with the wonderful scents of woods burned ritualistically in a fire pit manned by a monk, chanting and occasionally ringing a bell that resonates for at least half a minute after each knock of the wood mallet.

Later, more monks joined in a chorus of the most deeply intricate harmonies I’ve ever heard. Though I’d feared I wouldn’t know how to appreciate the ritual, all I had to do was sit and listen to understand how this is supposed to clear one’s mind for the rest of the day. It was absolutely incredible.

Afterwords, a monk (the “head” monk, I think, because he led all the chants), invited me to tea with some others. Though I couldn’t understand most of their Japanese conversation, the experience was great. We sat cross-legged at a short table sipping mild green tea, eating rice sweets and Hershey’s Kisses (yeah). Behind us was a beautiful garden surrounding a Koi pond, full of giant evergreens, stone lanterns, and a smaller rock garden. A large wooden deck, from which to simply stand and admire the garden’s elegance, sat between the open door of the tea room and the garden.

At the temple, I considered pulling out my camera to document its incredible artistry, thus to better appreciate it and the discipline required to maintain it for hundreds of years, but this was a time I thought best to avoid tainting with a tourist’s tactlessness.

…but I just had to get the camera out for a few quick shots at least in the privacy of my room:

After breakfast – again a delicious meal of extraordinary extravagance – I set off for Oku-no-in graveyard. The largest graveyard in Japan, it holds over 250,000 grave stones and the ashes of the richest, who wish to be interred near great figures like the Tokugawa shogunate. What follows are just a few shots from around Oku-no-in, mostly lacking captions because I really don’t know much more than you do about the place. It’s just a great place to be a shameless tourist:

People heading to the main temple at the end of the trail through the graveyard stopped here to toss water on the feet of these statues. Does anyone have an idea what they represent? Koyasan is the heart of Shingon Buddhism, if that helps. I don’t have the time to research this now, though.

And one last shot I liked:

For more images, go here