Koya-san
Trip Start
Oct 13, 2010
1
5
96
Trip End
Oct 13, 2011
Mt Koya, Chubu, Japan
Friday, October 22, 2010
Loads of travelling today, took 2 trains to Koya-san and then a cable car upto Mt.Koya.
The cable car was very steep with picturesque views of the mountains.
We then took a bus to the monestary we were staying in.
Our room was cool, similar to the Ryokan in Hakone, traditional Japanese beds and tatami mats on the floor. It also had a t.v, phone, heated toilet seat, hairdryer in the bathroom etc, we did not expect this in a monestary!! Elsewhere in the monestary we were also disappointed to find places where you could smoke, vending machines and a guy who was replacing old t.vs in the rooms with flatscreen ones!
We learnt that rather than living the simple celibate lifestyle we would imagine monks would live, they were all loaded with flash cars and all married with kids! Whats that all about?
We then went for a walk around Koya-san which was quite nice in the mountains although we found loads of monestaries just like ours and the whole area seemed to cash in on tourism.
We had this idea that there was a monestary ontop of Mt.Koya and we were very privelliged to stay in it with actual monksand were miffed to discover this was not the case, it all felt like a bit of a con really.
We visited a temple and a graveyard in Koya-san and then went back to the monestary for dinner.
We met the rest of the group for dinner and again, similar to the Ryokan we were all seated on the floor with small individual tables infront of us with many different dishes, i did prefer the food to the Ryokan simply because it was vegetarian, no fish!
As we were eating, one of the monks had to scurry out of the room when his mobile phone went off!
After dinner, we chilled out in our room ready to get early to watch the monks praying tomorrow morning.
Sat 23rd Oct
This morning we were ready at 6:30 to watch the monks praying, we were sitting at the back so couldnt see everything but there was alot of chanting, Jerome describes it as being tranquil and interesting!
We then had breakfast and again, seated on the floor with our individual tables, however Jerome and I could not face rice and fish for breakfast so we hurried back to our room for coffee and biscuits!
Soon after breakfast we began our journey to Osaka.
