Memoirs of Nippon (7)

The following morning, I bid a sad goodbye to the deers in the park. I shared my journey back to Osaka with an obasan, I met her in the hostel during breakfast and it appeared we could take the same train while she was heading to Kobe. She spoke very good English for a Japanese, and surprisingly she was the only one in the family who could. She was awed by my travel journal (LOL) and encouraged me to travel more while I can :)

I was heading to Koyasan that day, but I needed to drop my bags in my hostel in Osaka instead of lugging them up the mountain. Fortunately, I did! A first glimpse of Osaka revealed lots of shopping opportunities. Before jumping into the train, again I randomly walked into a restaurant as I had a craving for Katsu-karē. Oh so yummy! It seemed like I was the only tourist in there snapping picture of my food!

I bought the Koyasan-World Heritage Ticket from Namba station, and the whole journey took about 2 hours to get there, train and cable car. And so it happened that I actually forgot to check how to get to my hostel up in Koyasan (great)... I was quite lucky I met a Japanese-Caucasian couple along the way who kindly asked for directions in Japanese for me. So I guess shit does happen, just deal with it along the way.

It was drizzling when I alighted from the bus. The air up the mountain was also much colder. I finally made it to Koyasan guest house Kokuu, a very cool guest house with modern capsule-alike rooms. Here's a photo of my room (on the left). I remembered Laurent would be here too but it was pretty empty when I checked in. It was drizzling but I still went out to the nearby Okunoin for a walk. It's said to be the largest graveyard in Japan and the most sacred site in Koyasan. Amidst the rain, there still was an air of holiness and serenity.

When I came back from the walk, a few more people checked in. Laurent happened to be in the capsule right opposite me. Then Ryochi (owner of Kokuu) told us about this guided Okunoin night walk which was happening that evening. Lucky lucky us as it was a monthly affair and we were there at the right time. So five of us decided to go for it even though it was still raining!!! Each of us would hold a battery operated lantern and follow the guide who explained in Japanese. It wasn't as cold as I thought, I guess my tolerance for cold is really high!

We abandoned the guided tour at some point because there was a shortcut back to our guesthouse, but only 3 of us came back together. The other two somehow got lost. We were starving by then, but Ryochi was cooking us curries. He surely had a lot of "business", because all of us were so hungry!! Laurent and I had the butter chicken curries, and surprisingly it was too spicy for an Asian like me! For a French, he didn't even complain about the spiciness! Jack, a guy from Seattle, ordered his curry twice! Ryochi sure cooks well, I love it despite having to steal some beer from Laurent to ease the spiciness. That night, I played Othello with the Japanese girls and won, it was a friendly match so no biggie. Laurent and Jack apparently never heard of the game before. Jack had a very weird craving that night, he wanted oreo cookies... Amazingly, yes I had them!!! So funny. I passed it on to him which he initially refused but he caved in.

We spoke about going for the early morning prayers the following day but most of them backed out after having been on the night tour. So it was just the Japanese girls and me. It was about 530am, we woke up and got ready. The weather was freezing, even more so than the night before! I followed the girls and we arrived at Gobyo (Kobo Daishi’s Shrine) for an hour of prayers. It was surreal. A nap followed by a warm freshly made breakfast thereafter made the start of the day even better.

After breakfast, many of us were going on our separate ways. My main goal in Koyasan was to see Okunoin, so everything else didn't seem to matter much. I decided to tag along someone who would be on the same path with me (maybe same train back down to Osaka), it happened to be Laurent. He wanted to check out Daimon at the other end of Koyasan, so I followed him. Along the way, we saw a few magnificent temples (I didn't know all the names) including Daito and Kondo. We got to Daimon and there were a few trails to take but we didn't as we wanted to catch the bus back down soon.

So we went back to the bus-stop, it happened that a mini flea market was happening right around there. So we popped by and got served complimentary dessert with green tea. How nice! I was having a browse, then a guy told me I could have a mini card laminated with a four-leaf clover in it. Ahhhh, my lucky charm! Laurent was happy with a pack of "rice" he got which was said to be blessed by the monks.

We took the bus, cable car and then waited for a train together and wasted the time comparing silly notes between his French Lonely Planet's phrase book and mine. It was time for me to head back to Osaka while Laurent traveled to west Japan. It was fun to have travel companions for the past two days!