Weekend Retreat.

Today is "Respect for the Aged Day," so we all had Monday off for a little weekend adventure. Nic, Suzi, Pam, and I travelled 4 hours (4 separate trains and a cable car) to make it to Mt. Koya, which has served as a religious retreat for the Shingon ("true word") Buddhist sect since 816. Koya-san houses over 100 temples!

More than 50 of those are shukubo (temples providing lodging accomodation and meals). This is one of the long hallways in the shukubo we stayed at, which was simply awesome. Besides sleeping in a traditional Japanese room, we also got to participate in 2 services (one mediation at 6pm, and one chanting at, yes, 6am), eat Buddhist dinner and breakfast (no meat, no fish, no nothing), and relax, think, chat, and laugh in the peaceful atmosphere.

Only the headmaster at this temple knows how to prepare the rock garden, which, amazingly, shows no proof of footprints. Confusingly beautiful. When he goes out of town, no one else knows how to do it!

The night sky.

Here are just a couple photos of the temples and markers scattered around the mountain. Koya-san has a huge cemetary, but my camera ran out of batteries before we made it there. An interesting fact about Japanese burials: it is not uncommon for people to get buried with their company instead of their family or spouse. A Japanese coffee company had stone-carved tea cups and saucers designating their plot, and we also saw some sort of spaceship, which we couldn't really comprehend.