Mount Koya: Of Monks and Onsen

Ages back, I asked Zoë what some of her Japanese travel highlights had been, and she seemed strangely fixated on Buddhist monks, an ancient cemetery, and supposedly superlative vegan food. Mount Koya, she promised, had all this in spades. I worked some persuasive powers on Maddy, and so it was decided that the first proper stop on our tour of Japan would be Koya-San.

How good is this: it was snowing when we arrived in Mount Koya. Snowing, despite the above-zero temperature and the lingering autumnal landscape. After a hectic morning of extensive train travel, culminating in the cable car that climbed hundreds of feet to the Koya-San bus station, the snow-showers were magical. A monk told us that snow usually only starts falling in late December, so this was something special.

We dropped off our luggage at Ichijoin, our Buddhist monastery accommodation for the night. Koya-San is packed with temples of the ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) variety, so we'd obviously selected a place known for its food. Then it was straight to Oku-No-In, the 1000 year old Buddhist cemetery and the clear highlight of Koya-San. We crossed a bridge and suddenly everything was muted, all grey marble and cedar trees. The tombs and markers, kept scrupulously clean of branches and overgrowth, were more likely to be decorated with brightly coloured bibs or shawls. Even the hollows in trees were filled with religious tokens.

We made our way along the 2 kilometer path to the Temple of Lanterns. The name speaks for itself, but it's hard to explain the sheer scale of the temple's lantern population, hung in rows along the outside edge of its swooping roof and covering every inch of the ceiling inside. The incense levels rivaled those of an enthusiastic Orthodox church at Easter. 

A little way outside the temple stood a tall haystack-shaped mass of small infant statues. Every statue within a reachable height had been dressed in a little red bib. This stood as a monument to stillborns and aborted babies. We noticed a couple of other such conical monuments back along the cemetery path, as well as countless individual bibbed statues. Haunting. 

The stone lanterns along the path were lit when we turned back. It was deliciously atmospheric. If all the countless spaces reserved for candles were filled and lit, Oku-No-In would look like one of Studio Ghibli's fantastical landscapes.

When we got back to Ichijoin, we replaced our shoes with slippers, were shown around the temple, and then removed the slippers as we entered our room. There were also separate slippers to be used in the bathroom. (Japan is well-stocked with slipper customs.) Our room was divided into two sections, both laid over with tatami mats. The first space was for our bags, and the second for us. This section was well-heated; but the best lay waiting under a squat, square, curtained table with its two seat-backed cushions. We were ushered into these seats and directed to put our feet under the table, which turned out to contain a heater. Delicious leg warmth! The monk affirmed that yes, this table was dangerous as one never wants to leave it. 

The one thing to tempt us out from the table was dinner, served at precisely 5:30pm. The monk carried in a high stack of trays containing several small covered bowls and a few open dishes of mysterious quality. We knew everything would be vegan, so there was really no excuse not to shovel absolutely everything into our mouths and guess its identity later. There was, as far as we could tell, soup, a ginger-radish dish to be eaten with rice, tofu topped with a sesame-based sauce, a couple of small salads, rubbery soy milk skin presented in wraps to be dipped in soy sauce, a long narrow tray of various fruits and other bits and pieces, tempura leaves and mushrooms, and silky tofu in a sweet cherry-mint soup. 

Altogether: mmmm. These monks should take their dishes to the Iron Chef stadium and do battle against Hiroyuki Sakai.

Then came time for the onsen, an indoor hot spring bath. We changed into our bathrobes (called something in Japanese that sounds not entirely dissimilar to the Japanese word for 'pimp' - oops) and picked up our towels. After trying for a few minutes to jiggle open a locked door, we found the women's onsen further down the corridor. And then we got naked. This was as awkward as it was funny, quite like our next challenge: using a row of showers opposite the onsen to rinse ourselves before bathing. Later on, we discovered the exact extent of our shower fail when we caught sight of two other women showering facing away from the direction we'd chosen, and using the small tubs that I'd accidentally sat on (no glasses). 

The onsen itself was as you'd expect: hot water encased within a rectangular bath edged with wooden slats. Hot hot. We spent about five minutes gingerly lowering ourselves into the water, fifteen minutes in the water, and half an hour fanning ourselves madly with bamboo fans. Then came the time to return to our room, where futons had been laid out in our absence. 

We woke at 5:40am, pulled on clothes and hurried over to the main hall to witness a Buddhist ceremony. We sat at the back of a dark room with other guests and listened to the monks chant and ring bells. Smoke progressively filled the room. My eyes watered and I could feel the snow-cold air seep in from outside despite the nearby heater. There were intricately welded lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and gold and red tokens crowding shelves that lined the room. Pretty intense for 6am. 

Breakfast followed immediately afterwards: another delicious spread of bowls and trays, including my favourite, a 'tofomelette'. Maddy and I then enjoyed the leg-warming table for a little longer before packing to go. On our way out, we stopped to admire the intricate gardens through the temple's floor-to-ceiling windows. One contained snow-dusted bushes of the most carefully tended variety, and another had a large fishpond with very large fish. 

We walked a way down the main road in the opposite direction to the cemetery, discovering yet more temples and bright red bridges leading to small shrine-embedded islands. Then came time to grab our luggage and head back to the train station. Onwards to Kobe!