To Koya san (Mt.Koya)

Last weekend I visited Koya san (Mt. Koya). It is a sacred center of Shingon Buddhism. Kobo daishi (Kukai) lived and taught at Mt. Koya for many years until he finally entered into eternal meditation in 835. I was a bit surprised to know that two meals are offered to him everyday - he is believed to be still alive! It took almost 6 hours to get by car and four of us were all very tired when we got there. However, beautiful Autumn leaves welcomed us and a great view of Mt. Koya helped us feel better a lot. We first visited Kongobuju temple - it is a headquarter of Shingon Buddhism. We walked around the temple and saw many beautiful halls as in the photos. Then we moved to Rengejoin at where we stayed the night. We had shyojin ryori - vegetable diet dinner. I was looking forward to having monks' dinner. I can't say it was delicious but it was a very intereting dinner and was decorated very nicely. There was a tourist group from Australia and I took a bath with some of the girls on that night. It was a little shocking for me to see big tatoos on back of some girls... We all had to get up at 5:50 am (on Sunday!) like all monks do and were given some lessons about Shingon Buddihism for over an hour! It was so cold and we all had to sit seiza style - this was very hard. Then we had breakfast. It was a very simple breakfast but was very good after a long lesson! Four of us said thank you and good-bye to some monks and left the temple and visited some other temples in Koya. There were so many tourists on that day probably because it was a fine day. We left Mt. Koya at around 2:00 pm and arrived at Okayama 7:00 pm. It was a very interesting experience for me and I wish I could have stayed a bit longer...