Friday 29th June - another day, another mountain

The next day dawned pretty hot and humid in Nara, so I wasn't entirely sorry to be leaving for higher altitudes. Fortified by a Comfort Hotel continental breakfast (not bad considering they were free), and with one bag safely on its way to Hiroshima ahead of me, I was at the station and waiting for a train by 8.30am.

A quick big-up for the Comfort Hotel in Nara here by the way - it was one of the nicest rooms I had through the trip, the included continental breakfast was decent and varied on the two days I stayed (Cocopops, oh yeah baby!), there was free wifi and also free coffee in the lobby (or to take to your room) from 3pm to midnight. The staff had mixed English skills but we managed to get by between us and they forwarded my luggage with no issues whatever. Also it's literally just across the road from the JR station. If you go to Nara and you don't mind chain hotels, you could certainly do worse - I filled in the comment card that was left in my room and told them their staff were  both efficient and lovely, which was absolutely true.

Anyway, advert break over.... the trip to Koyasan from... well most anywhere actually, is a little convoluted and also a little long, due to the fact that you have to switch from the national JR line railways to a private line, which means changing stations and buying an extra ticket or two day rail pass since you can't use your JR Pass on the private lines. But, I knew this in advance and had decided that it was also totally worth it ifor the prospect of staying in a Buddhist monastery and trying some of their unique vegetarian cuisine - shojin ryori. This was the single most expensive night of my trip in terms of accommodation bill, but since it came with a full dinner and breakfast, actually worked out very reasonably.

First leg of the trip was to Kyoto (on which ride I saw my first and only dude of my trip going about his business in a yukata and geta - women in kimonos I had encountered a few of in Kanazawa, and a Buddhist monk/priest sat next to me on the train to Nara, but regular dudes in traditional clothing as an everyday outfit seem rare). There wasn't much else notable about the trip since I was covering similar ground to the day I arrived in Nara, and so most of the time I spent listening to music and checking my itinerary.

After we arrived at Kyoto,  I was double-checking my train  to make sure it was the one I wanted for my next leg - Shin-imamiya - when a youngish Japanese guy (totally looked like a "works in the media" type) came up to me to ask if I was lost (I wasn't) and remarked that he had seen me get on the train at Nara and hoped that I was enjoying Japan. His English was pretty near excellent - I have no idea why he didn't speak to me at Nara or on the train since it wasn't crowded, but maybe he was shy of approaching me till the last moment. Who knows. Anyway, it was only a quick chat since he was catching a train himself, but he did confirm to me that I was on the right platform for the train to Shin-imamiya, which saved me some kanji-comparisons and mucking about with notes, so I am grateful to him for that.

Shin-imamiya is where the JR Pass reaches its limit. You can buy a "World Heritage Pass" at one of several stations - that one included - which gets you train trips to Koyasan and back, plus discounts to some of the attractions and free bus travsl in the town for two days, so that's exactly what I did. I actually upgraded to the Express version while I was about it because that shaved a good chunk of time off the trip for the sake of under a tenner.

Pass duly bought and paid for, I had a bit of a wait at Shin-imamiya, since I had overestimated the time it would take to sort my tickets and so forth. But unexpectedly, there was free wifi there (this seemed to be a random but surprisingly common thing at some of the more rural stations I passed through - go figure). If you happen to find it while travelling in Japan, it'll show as the network "wifine" and you need to open your browser and say yes to it before it works on all apps - took me a couple of goes to realise that. Anyway,  while I was mucking with my iPhone, a Japanese businessman came and sat next to me and asked if he could make conversation to me, which was quite sweet. His English was very limited, but in the short time before his train arrived he managed to ask me about my trip a little and ask where I was from. Clearly this day was the day for random encounters!

The trip from Shin-imamiya is to Koyasan is a fairly unremarkable trip to start with, but once you get to the mountainous parts, t's quite lovely - Wakayama seems like an interesting area and it was a shame I didn't get to explore it more. The train line is single track up the mountain so trains have to wait and pass each other, but there are beautiful views on the off-side which I was, luckily, sitting on.

The last part of the trip starts when you get almost to the top - the train terminates and the summit can be reached only by ropeway - cable car - only this one travels on the ground. Anyone who has been to Scarborough has probably travelled in mini versions of these going up and down between the harbour and the Grand Hotel. They're quite common in Japan in all forms, but this is the only one I got to travel on since I have a phobia of the actual dangling-from-the-sky versions. After THAT you have to catch a bus into Koyasan town itself from the ropeway station at the top, because walking between the ropeway station and the town is banned due to the potential for accidents. Now you can see why I only wanted to be carrying one bag for this excursion! All in all I think the trip took me just over three hours from Nara, but it honestly felt shorter, and I could have saved time if I had known more about Shin-imamiya in advance, but oh well.

Koyasan itself is a thriving town with schools, hospitals and shops, despite also being home to around 50 monasteries and temples, plus a few world heritage sites. There were of course coin lockers in the town centre where I dumped my bag for 300 yen (yay, it fitted into one of the small ones - I was so relieved) and that gave me most of the morning and afternoon to check out the sights I wanted to see before early check-in and dinner at Henjoko-in - my monastery for the night.

I had the free bus pass as part of my train ticket, but actually for the most part, Koyasan is pretty walkable and relatively flat. I used the buses there mainly just to save time, as opposed to effort - they're all clearly marked with destinations and if in doubt, there's an excellent tourist information centre right at the crossroads in the middle of town, near one of the main bus stops.

First stop of the day was the Danjo Garan, a temple complex that contains the Konpon Daito pagoda, and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was an absolutely beautiful day - hot sun and blue skies but little to no humidity at the higher altitude, so I took my time wandering the area and taking a lot of pictures. It's hard to convey the scale of some of these building in photographs, especially when it's not crowded with people, but the Konpon Daito is truly magnificent in size and beauty, and I can see why it's so highly regarded both within Buddhism and culturally.

From there (with the assistance of a passing local lady and no thanks to another artist-impression type tourist map) I muddled my way over to Kongobu-ji, the head temple of the Koyasan Buddhism sect, for a look at their collection of beautifully painted door screens and their extensive rock garden. I took no pictures of the former (not allowed) but some of the latter - it's the largest rock garden in Japan, and it's very impressive. I debated walking up to the Daimon - the gate that guards the entrance to Koyasan - from there, but in the end my stomach was reminding me that I had not eaten since 7am, so instead I walked the short distance back into town for sandwiches and coffee.

By this time it was about 2pm, and I was keenly aware that I needed to be checking into my temple between 4 and 5, so I wasted no time in hopping on a bus to the main reason I had come to Koyasan in the first place - Okunoin. Okunoin is the largest cemetery in Japan, and probably one of the most beautiful - the pictures of it online were what initially caught my eye about Koyasan, before I ever knew you could stay in temples there or how easy it was to visit. It also contains the mausoleum of the founder of the Koyasan Buddhist colony, but I was honestly less interested in that (not being a Buddhist) and far more interested in the cemetery itself, with its moss-covered rocks and wood and incredibly tall and ancient trees. I feel like I am getting a bit boring describing things as beautiful, but what else can you say about a place like that? For the most part, due to the high tree cover, it's cool and damp, and slightly dark in places - very atmospheric. And the graves range from the very old to the very new (I have no idea whose the grave is with the silver rocketship on it, but wow, it was impressive). In a lot of cases there is no trace that I can see of who was buried there, but I do know that the place is full of famous, historic people, and that corporations buy graves there for their workers or, in one notable case - an extermination company has a memorial there to the insects it has destroyed. There are also a few darker sides to Okonuin, like the stairs that you'd better not stmble on if you want a long and happy life, or the well of which it is said if you can't see your reflection in the water, you'll be dead within 3 years (here's a tip, don't look into it on the closest side to the path because you'll block the light).

I could have stayed there for hours, but I only had two, so I wandered it from end to end with occasional forays off the main path into the woods, where there are yet more memorials, in nooks and crannies between trees and rocks. By the time I emerged at the far end, it was past time for me to be getting to the temple to check-in, so instead of walking back to town as planned, I ended up getting another bus back to the place where I had stored my bags before walking to Henjoko-in.

Finding it was a little tricksy, since I had already established that my ability to identify kanji from print against kanji carved in wood is a little limited. Also, there was nothing in particular in the photo I had to distinguish it from other temples nearby, but with the assistance of a kindly monk who jovially offered basic directions to my query (pointing to the left and holding up two fingers - so two temples along to the left, then) I rolled up to find I was still in time to check in and indulge in a long bath before dinner, which was a relief.

The monks who took care of the tourists (there were a handful of us there overnight) seemed to be quite junior, but all had sufficient English to deal with most questions, if you didn't ask them in a complicated fashion. Throughout my stay, they were completely pleasant to me, and very unobtrusive beyond the fact that they did have a tendency to open your door after knocking if they wanted to get your attention to I learned to keep the intermediary screen door shut if I was changing clothes. I'm not especially easily embarrassed,  but I really don't think a poor Buddhist monk needs to see that sort of horror before dinner. My room by the way was huge - two rooms and a private toilet, in fact, plus a covered verandah that looked out over a wild corner of the grounds. It was in the newer block of the temple, so sadly didn't overlook the Japanese garden, but I had no complaints regardless.

After taking a bath in the communal ladies bathing area (which I had to myself since there was one person leaving as I arrived, and one arriving as I left - a  non-Japanese Asian lady who I actually had to explain the routine for the communal bathing to - I suppose I was approaching "experienced" on the subject by then) I returned to be told that dinner was imminent. Sure enough it was brought to my room shortly after by one of the guys I mentally dubbed Black Coats, with apologies to Butlins, since they all wore black samue and seemed to be solely in charge of the visitors' wellbeing.

The food was indeed amazing - tofu in an astonishing number of forms, plus rice, noodles, broths, fresh vegetables and fresh fruit. There was absolutely no way I could manage it all, but I did attempt to try everything on the three trays it arrived on, until I couldn't eat another morsel. The tempura vegetables were particularly delicious, as was what I believe to have been freeze-dried tofu.

It was so filling that I went for a brief walk afterwards back towards town, because I was worried I would get indigestion if I just sat around doing nothing. I had to be quick though as the temple closes its doors at 8pm, so there was just time to walk off a few calories and buy a couple of cold drinks from a vending machine to last me the evening, then back to watch my futon bed being put together expertly by the youngest of the Black Coats. I complimented him on his speed at the task, even if I cheated a bit once he was gone and rolled out the second base-mat from the cupboard as extra padding due to the stiff back and shoulder that had been bothering me on and off since Kanazawa. And by 9 o'clock I was tucked in with alarm set for 5am and the screen doors to the verandah open so that I could sleep in fresh air for once (sleeping in air conditioned rooms inevitably either makes me cough or sneeze at some point). But thanks to the protection of the mosquito nets on the verandah I could get a night's sleep without worrying about being bitten to death if I kept the window open.

• Pictures of Okonuin and other sights in Koyasan are over on Flickr in relatively correct order
• Music for the day was David Sylvian's Red Guitar, among others.