#mt koya

[uroko]

Koyasan 高野山

[jyuu-daime]

okunoin cemetery, mt koya

on 35mm

[resubee]

Kyoto ✧ Nara ✧ Kibune and Kurama ✧ Mt Koya ✧ Tokyo

I finally finished my travel journal from our trip to Japan last year. I didn’t know exactly know how I wanted to do it when I started so edits and additions kept me working on it on and off over the last year. Even though it took forever I’m happy with it and really glad I did it. I hope to do more (shorter) ones for future trips, as well as for our time in Tokyo last June. I posted a few more inside pictures on my instagram last week.

☆ shop

[i-alwayslikedstrangecharacters]

The Okunoin Cemetery, Mount Koya Japan is the largest graveyard in all of Japan and is the burial ground of over 200'000 monks. (Source)

[tenjin-no-shinja]

Kōyasan 高野山 2023 Pilgrimage

Because I practice Shinbutsu Shūgō 神仏習合, I'll be sharing pics from my trip to Kōyasan, one of the most sacred sites for Shingon Buddhism. (If you don't wanna see pics or videos from this just block the tag Koyasan 2023)

It took me around 2 hours to go from Kyoto city out to Wakayama prefecture by local/express trains. But it was worth it to see the beautiful scenery.

Getting to the official first stop for Kōyasan let me off in an absolutely stunning train station with a lot of beautiful artwork in the ceilings, and reminded me of lacquer paintings.

Even the trains had stunning artwork. In order to get up the mountain you take a cable car, then once you're there you take a bus to the town.

I got a video of the ascent to the top

[goldilocksinjapan-blog]

Kongobuji Temple / 金剛峯寺

Location: Koyasan, Wakayama

Address: 132 Koyasan, Koya-cho, Ito-gun, Wakayama-ken / 和歌山県伊都郡高野町高野山132

Information: http://www.koyasan.or.jp/en/kongobuji/

[blackrainbowblade]

DAY 1 First, a quick update on where I am. So, you may remember, a few years ago, I travelled to Japan and wrote my first #travelswithasword blog. During that trip, a lot of stuff happened. I'd quit my job and gone away with no real plans for what to do when I got back. While I was away, my grandma passed away and we had a ceremony for her in a temple on the sacred mountain of Koya-san. It was amazing and moving, and it really made me realise how much of my life I'd spent worrying abiut the day to day minutiae, office politics, money etc. So I swore that I would not take another job that wasn't spiritually fulfilling. Skip ahead three years and this I'm just starting my third year as a civil funeral minister. I love this work. I get to help people everyday, and I work in a spiritual environment too. Long story short, I decided I wanted to take this a step further to become an actual, er , ministery minister. (See, I like the term warrior-priestess, but I think the job role is 'vicar.') So that's what I'm doing and, in January 2018, I start training for the church, so as I can devote my whole life to the spiritual stuff. I guess I should thank the monks of Koya-san, and my gran's spirit, wherever that's floating about! However, this year, I seriously needed a holiday. Ministering funerals every day is draining, and my creative mojo was suffering badly. So I sold some family heirlooms (thanks again, Gran) and, this time, decided to head to Israel to learn as much as I could about the actual extant archaeology and history of the church I will be serving in. I, and my trusty travel-companion Mum, arrived in Tel Aviv at 3.20am on Christmas Eve with little clue as to what to expect. The Western media would have you believe all of Israel is a war zone, so we were determined to be careful. We piled into an airport shuttle. They stand outside Ben Gurion airport and only leave when they are full. So after some small talk with a few other tourists, off we went. It was 4am, so forgive me, I fell asleep and only regains consciousness when we were in Jerusalem itself. It's a very distinctive city. Seriously beautiful and you get an immediate sense of both its age and the culture of the Middle East. I was reminded of Cairo - the whole city is the same dust-colour as other desert cities. Most noticeable though, in Jerusalem, is the old city wall. It is vast, seemingly impenetrable, and visible from most parts of the city. Mum and I had booked a hotel in Ras El Amoud, which is in the Palestinian district. This turned out to be a slight mistake as Israeli taxis are not keen to enter the Palestinian areas and our shuttle would not go beyond the checkpoint at Damascus Gate, thus we were dropped off, at about 5am, at Damascus Gate, one of several gates into the Old City through those same vast walls. We walked from there to Ras El Amoud and picked up a map in a nearby hotel. Unfortunately, we did take a wrong turn at one point and ended up on the wrong side of the Kidron Valley, which, as it sounds, is a vast valley. It is also a graveyard that extends for over 20km, down through the Valley, out of Jerusalem and across the desert to the Dead Sea. Mum had a right moan. She always blames me if we take a wrong turn (!), even though I showed her the map. Regardless though, I think we witnessed something amazing. See, it was 5am, in a foreign city, and the sun started to come up over Kidron Valley. On the far side of Kidron are Gethsemene and the Mount of Olives, places I've only ever heard of from the Bible. There's a kind of magic in those names. I don't think it even matters if you're religious - you've probably heard them from childhood stories. Well, I had the opportunity to watch THE most magnificent sunrise over Gethsemene. It was breathtaking. In the pictures posted here, is the sunrise as it happened, looking across the Valley to Gethsemane. The second two pictures were taken a little later (the sun is just up). One is the Church of All Nations at Gethsemane. The other is looking back the way we'd come, across the vast Jewish cemetery of Kidron.

[jesskiitravels]

15/9/17 - Living with the monks for a day on Koyasan

So today we took a cable car up Mt Koya. This tuned out to be a much preferable way of travelling compared to climbing Fuji. Fuji needs to get ahead of the times and install cable cars to the top!

We're staying in a Buddhist temple for the night, where we can relax in a nice peaceful environment, before the busyness of Osaka!

We had a wander round the town (I was surprised how big the town is on mt Koya!) and headed towards Okunoin. This is the site of the mausoleum of Kobo Daishi (also known as Kukai), the founder of Shingon Buddhism. The route up there is lined with lanterns, and is a huge and beautiful graveyard (Wishing to be close to Kobo Daishi in death to receive salvation, many people, including prominent monks and feudal lords, have had their tombstones erected here over the centuries.)