Koya-san Experience

The highlight of our trip was a two night stay in a thousand year old Buddhist temple. The actual building was 100 years old but the temple itself was founded more than a thousand years ago. Koya-san is the home base for Shingon Buddhism, a sect established in the 800s by Kobo Daishi. Kobo Daishi is famous throughout Japan as being the father to many aspects of Japanese culture including the kana writing system. His mausoleum is in the big cemetery on Koya-san (I will write a separate blog about the cemetery).

When we arrived at the temple (Ekoin) there was a monk outside sweeping up leaves. We were shown to our beautiful tatami mat room by meandering through old wooden hallways and up stairs. We had to really pay attention so we could find our way out again and then find our room again!

We had a beautiful view of the temple garden and had hot tea and cakes waiting for us. Dinner wasn’t served until 5:30 so we went out walking in the small town.

There was just one main street lined with temple after temple, most of which have been places of lodging for tourists and pilgrims for centuries. There were lots of shops and some restaurants too. The weather was clear and sunny but much colder than Kani. Koya-san is high up on a mountain so we had to take a cable car up at a very vertical angle!

The autumn leaves were amazing. We did a little hiking and toured the inside of the main temple complex and headed back for dinner.

The food was typical temple food. Being Buddhist they don’t eat meat. But this food also had no fish, eggs, dairy, onions or garlic. Believe it or not it was absolutely delicious. It was like magic what those monks could make without all those ingredients. I don’t think I would have even noticed the lack of those things if I hadn’t known. Koya-san is famous for what’s called gomadofu.

It is a soft pudding like thing made from tofu and ground sesame. Very nice! We also had noodles, tempura, various vegetable dishes, rice, soup, and fruit.

We also had a local brand of sake that Buddhist temples serve that tasted nice and peppery. After dinner, we went down to the public bathing area in the temple, had a nice hot soak (gender separated of course) with the other guests and then went back up to our room to huddle in front of the kerosene heater and go to bed. The next day was reserved for the cemetery.