Koyosan and Kyoto – the land of temples and shrines

One of Pete’s ski students very kindly offered us his apartment in Osaka to stay in. He also recommended a trip to Koyosan, of which we had never heard of. Upon arrival at the train station, it seemed we were the only Western tourists who hadn’t – they were all there. We took a train for 2 hours, gradually approaching the mountains with some impressive valleys and tunnels. It could have featured on “Great Train Journeys”.

Next was a cable car/funicular to Koyosan. It was possibly the steepest and longest we have ever been on.

Thanks goodness we didn’t have to take the old pilgrim’s path and walk up the thousands of steps.

Many westerners were taking luggage to stay over at a “temple”. There are so many of said temples that they seemed more like a traditional ryokan but perhaps a Buddha would wake you at 6am for morning prayer. We saw a few about town in their Subaru, so business can’t be too bad.

A real pilgrim? Or just another tourist?

After a short bus journey we reached our destination of Oku-No-In (meaning inner sanctuary) containing Kobo Daishi’s Gobyo mausoleum. It is huge! The mausoleum for the founder of Shingon Buddhism was in an impressive wooden building with lots of shrines around it, a hall full of lanterns (some of which have burned continuously for 900 years) and a huge room filled with thousands of small Buddha statues (no photos allowed).

It is deep within a forest filled with tombs and offerings from individuals, families and many, many Japanese companies.

The forest of huge cedar trees was very impressive.

Next, we checked out the Konpon Daito Pagoda, the Chu-mon Gate, and a few quick photos on the bridges across the Hasu-ike- lotus pond.

There were other temples that we could have visited but it was time to start the two hour journey back to Osaka.

After a rainy day catching up on some admin and trying to plan the last two weeks of our travels we set off to Kyoto, just 30 minutes by train from Osaka. Kyoto was the former capital of Japan and is huge. What I wasn’t expecting was the vast number of Western tourists – EVERYWHERE!

We crossed the famous bridge Togetsu-Kyo, where later in the year you could see the trained cormorants fishing. For now, there were just lots of tourists bumping into each other in their rowing boats.

We walked to Tenru-ji temple to wander round the beautiful gardens. It was very busy but still very lovely.

Next we headed to the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove. I was expecting it to be busy but Wow! It was chocca. You had to time your chance to get a photo without hundreds of people in it. The site of the day was a taxi driving up the narrow path, making everyone move into the gutter to let it pass, so an obese European family didn’t have to walk up the hill. Unbelievable!

We walked through Kameyama-Koen Park so that we could take in the view over the river.

We jumped on the train to Kyoto Station which is a very impressive building with glass and metal structures exposed in the rooflines. We visited the Sky Garden Terrace, took photos of the Kyoto Tower and walked the Skyway.

Then thinking that the crowds would have reduced by 5pm, we headed to Fushimi Inari-Taisha shrine. I think everyone else had the same idea! The shrine is an impressive building and then has 4km of wooded slope lined with tori gates and sub-shrines. The pathway lined with the tori gates was rammed with people but as we ventured further up Mount Inari and took some smaller paths, we could hear birds singing and enjoy the countryside. Ahh bliss. As the sun was setting, we got some nice photos.