Tamayurano Sato Kimino-cho

... and boarded a bus for the short ride into the settlement. People are not allowed to walk along the road and we could see why as the bus snaked its way along the thin winding road. Making our way through the small town to the Ekoin Monastery - our temple lodgings (Shukubo as they are known) – we were greeted by some monks who explained the intricacies of staying in a Buddhist temple. They showed us to our room – a traditional tatami room – and advised us when ...

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091008

"Ryokan on Koyasan"
by swami_worldtraveler


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INTRO:

A traditional Japanese inn on a mountain top in a Buddhist complex, including a vegetarian dinner and breakfast... sounded great to me!

I didn't count on a typhoon, but then nothing is perfect, I guess. But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

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TO KOYASAN!...

By train --> tram --> bus it was a relatively short two ...

... a una especie de cripta con miles de budas en miniatura alineados en las paredes y al final de todo, otra pequena capilla.
A un lado estaba el mausoleo de Kukai, el monje que construyo el primer templo en Koyasan. Monjes de todo el pais peregrinan a Koyasan para pagar respeto a Kukai.
La chica danesa empezo a enojarme cuando me dijo que tenia que borrar mis fotos, porque no estaban permitidas en el templo. Por supuesto, no le hice caso. Por respeto, solo hice 3 ...

... temples. But there was one exception in this place… the mountain holds a sacred age old graveyard, the grounds which fortunately are open to outside visitors.

The graveyard projects a sense of wispy peace and calmness though I'd imagine slight eeriness during nights. We took a walk through the grounds beginning from late noon to early dusk, and it was ...

... bright orange pagoda, complete with buddha. The best part of the day trip though was wandering through the vast buddhist Okunoin cemetery on the eastern side. Thousands and thousands of different graves filled the area, many covered in overgrown moss which blended the stones into the environment and made for wonderful atmosphere. At the far end of the cemetery lay Torodo, or the latern temple, which was filled with thousands of lanterns inside!

... and the matress slanted to one side. So for the first night, I slept on a 30 degrees slant. I think it was hilarious, makes the experience even more worthwhile. I got the landlord to take the bed away, and now I just sleep on my futon, on the ground. Not working at Nova in some ways is pretty sad, I miss the students, times they pronounce my name 'Bicki', and the random things they say. But life goes on. I'm still at the kindergarten teaching toddlers. I'm also ...

... staring at them in awe like they've just seen god or something. One aussie girl said some old japanese man just stared at her the entire length of her subway ride. Osaka is a pretty foreign-friendly place. Everyone's super nice here and for the most part, I'd say about 50% of the actual Japanese people I've met speak enough English so I don't have to speak Japanese, but I'm finding out that my Japanese isn't too bad. I was able to open up a bank account with my ...

... that bore his signature and details of his day-to-day eating habits. Speaking of eating, we take lunch at a popular downtown restaurant that specialises in okonomoyaki, the local Osaka dish, which your own personal chef fries up at your table. Okonomoyaki is known as 'Japanese pizza' but it's really more like an omelette containing cabbage, eggs, flour and meat, topped with some brown sauce and mayonnaise. It tastes better than ...

We arrived in Nara in the middle of the afternoon and headed towards our Ryokan to check in drop off our bags and head out for a bite to eat, there was a 1030 curfew in the place we were staying. The ryokan we were staying in was super cute, we checked in then went and wondered the streets looking for a place to eat. we stopped at a small shop where we were the only ...

We arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun again stung by the ridiculous excess baggage charges I honestly think she should have been wearing a balaclava behind the counter. So we entered "my part" of the trip. I was the one who was looking forward to this leg of the trip. Before we left Ireland we organised train passes. In Japan they have the bullet trains, similar to the TGV in France. These trains are capable of travelling at over 300 kmph. So with this pass we got a week's worth of ...