Traditional temple stay - Koya San

Japans Kii peninsula has long been a mystic area, and therefor is littered with sacred sites. Koya San is one of them. This is where the tomb of Kobo Dashi: the founder of the Shingon school of Buddhism, is. Koya San is a mountain, or rather a plateau, where you will find more temples than houses. The place to spend the night here, is of course in one of these temples. So we did.

Cable car up the mountain 

We took a train from Osaka to the base of the mountain. Once there,  a steep ride with the cable car brings you to the top.  We took bus for the final leg to 'our temple': Muryoko-in.  Once registered, we got our slippers, and a monk showed us to our room.
This was a simple Japanese room: separated by paper walls, futons to sleep on, a few cushions to sit on and yukata (casual kimono) to wear.

Our room, with red slippers in the hallway

After our check in we walked a bit through the town, and then back to our room for dinner. This was a traditional Buddhist dinner: vegetarian and without strong smelling ingredients like garlic or onions. With a quiet knock on the door the monk announced his arrival, and then entered the room with neatly stacked tray tables. Like all food in Japan, this was beautifully displayed.  And tasty too!

Dinner is served

After dinner we took a quick dip in the traditional (shared) Ofuro, layed out our futons and were asleep by 10 pm. The next morning our alarm was set to 5 am! 

We had been invited to join the Gotomaki fire ritual, and being in a temple, we really wanted to. With some other guests, we sat in the back row of the ceremonial room.  The ceremony took about 80 minutes and we both were really glad we were there.  What was it like?

The room was very dimly lit, and one monk was continuously chanting. The other monks joined him intermittently. A fire burned, being fed by one of the younger monks. The whole esoteric atmosphere kind of drew us in. At the end we were invited to participate by adding to the fire and joining the final chant. We didn't take photos but just enjoyed it.

Koya San street view

During our visit a Swiss monk lived in the temple, and he invited us for a little chat afterwards. While drinking tea with some sweets he explained the ritual, the different elements of the Shingon Buddhism and temple live in general. This really added that bit extra to our temple stay. And after our chat.... it was time for breakfast, which we had in a communal room with the other guests.

One of our breakfast dishes

Something fishy - Tsukiji Market Tokyo

When you google at 'top things to do in Tokyo' you can almost be sure that Tsukiji fish market will pop up, most notably the tuna auction.
Being a food market lover myself, I really wanted to go there. But... the tuna auction starts at 6 am. And only a limited number of tourists are allowed to attend, so you have to queue at around 4 am. There is no public transport at that time of night (oddly enough Tokyo's public transport stops around midnight?!) so you have to either walk there, take a cab, or wait over a few drinks at one of the nearby pubs.  We opted out of attending the tuna auction, bad tourists...I know!

One of the small stalls

At around 8 am the rest of the inner market opens up to visitors, so there we were. Surrounded by tour groups, we entered the public space.

And now I hear you wondering...How was it??? First impression: way more tourists  than expected, and at the same time less of a tourist trap than expected.  First and foremost, this is a place where people work, no signs which way to go or defined routes. This also means that you have to be carefull not to be overrun by one of the funny, and very fast, carts. Even  though there is hardly any room to walk in between the stalls, the carts race past!

Tuna waiting for a buyer

The fish and seafood they sell is simply amazingly fresh and varies from extraordinary to bizar.  And it is a lot.  The sheer number of sea creatures on sale was mindblowing. It really made us wonder how much longer it takes to empty the oceans.

Super size mollusc

Of course there was an abundance of tuna. Al tuna arrives deeply frozen. Did you know that those beautifull slices of sashimi are precut in to blocks, while frozen, with a industrial band saw? I didn't!

I saw the biggest mussles I ever saw: at least 3 times the size of my hands. Crates of roe, alien crustaceans, unknown molluscs, vibrant octopi and fish in alls size and sorts inlcuding some wiggly, still alive, skewered fish.

Sawing sashimi blocks

The traditional thing to do after visiting the Tsukiji Market is to eat fresh sushi. Most people try to do that in the inner market, but the outer market makes a good alternative if you want somwhere (slightly) less busy.  We didn't do that either... we were such lousy tourists, I know! But the massacre we had just witnessed satiated or need for animal protein.

Vibrant octopi

Pilgrim for a day - Kii Peninsula

It's been a while since my last post. I've spent a month in Japan and of course that should mean I've got more stories to tell! But somehow it's been hard to get my mind back into working order since I came back. Harder than usual that is ;-)

I decided to just start with the 'easiest' story from Japan to get back into blogging . So this post will be all about the Kumano Kodo...

At 9 am we were walking under tall trees

Kumano Kodo translate roughly as 'the old route' and is a network of ancient pilgrimage mountain trails on the Japanes Kii-Peninsula, south east of Kyoto. (click here for more info)

We like to mix some nature activities into our trips, and when read about this area, we decided to go there. There are many hiking possibilities, but we walked just one day on the Nakahechi route. We chose this trail because it was fairly accesible, looked not too touristy, and you can fairly easy book accomodation through the tourist office.

Some steep climbs...

We walked from Nonaka-no-Ipposugi to Hongu, a 22 km hike. Since it was quite hard to get information on exactly what to expect, we were very happy with the walking schedule on the tourist information website.
Like all things Japanese, it was very detailed: You were supposed to start at 7am(!) and the whole hike was devided into sections. For every section a distance and a time was specified. To the minute. As did every point of interest.
Very funny, but very informative as well!

Part of the hike information provided by the tourist office:
we had 5 minutes to look at the tea house remains....

So we decided to start as instructed, and monitor closely for the first hour or 2 if we could keep up with the schedule. If we could, we would walk on, if we couldn't, we would turn back and take the bus. This was quite important, as the trail would mostly pass uninhabited areas and it wouldn't be possible to stop halfway through.

Around noon we walked trough a lovely valley

We spent the night at a nice minshuku (Japanese style B&B) and our hosts were so kind to drive us up the first hill (a very steep climb bout 200m up).
At 7:05am we started walking. The first hour or so we welked over on paved roads but then we entered the woods. After 2 hours we were still on schedule, so we decided to proceed. And what a lovely walk it was!

We were pleasantly surprised by the diversity in terrain. From majestic cedar woods, past small shrines, to fairytail like mossy paths, some very steep ascends and panoramic vistas. It was a strenuous hike though. But well worth it.

At 1 pm we walked an old paved section

We encountered about 10 people on the trail itself, so we could really enjoy our surroundings. The only downside: there weren't a lot of places to get water (that sounds like a weird thing to say, but when you go to Japan, you get used to vending machines every 100m very quickly!)

Some nice views around 2 pm

The last 1,5 hours, near the Honshu shrine, was in a more populated and area, so that was busier.  We arrived at the Honshu shrine around half past 3. And pretty much exhausted...
And we finally met some Japanes hikers, at least they wore a proper hikingoutfit even though we only saw them at the shrine

The Japanese prepare a bit better for their hikes than we did

The whole hike was very clearly marked, including the detour caused by a landslide.
We spent the following night at Yumomine Onsen town, where we could ease our muscles in a very hot, and rather smelly, thermal bath.

A well signposted trail