Mt Koya

From Osaka, we took the train to Mount Koya. Ate breakfast on the train again (random little bento boxes bought in the station, delicious though). We’ve been buying cartons of milk with little straws attached for Riley, it’s really handy, but this time we made a mistake and got some yucka liquid yogurt stuff (it had a cow on it! We thought that meant milk). Guess we should be more careful.

To get to Mount Koya we took the subway to a train to a cable car up the mountain, then a bus. But it was worth it. Mount Koya is a little mountain town with many Buddhist temples. We spent a few hours walking down a long path through a beautiful cemetery to a temple.

Inside it smelled strongly of incense and there were monks chanting and various rituals being performed. Riley slept through this whole experience, despite being strolled on a pretty bumpy path. She’s such a champ.

We stopped for lunch, where the waitress bright Riley her own little cup of tea. She mostly ate noodles (only soba, she doesn’t seem to like udon) and rice.

We then went to another beautiful temple. There were many Japanese tourists outside, and as Brad and Sage walked through with Riley they left “a wake of cooing women” behind them (in Brad’s words). Riley’s pretty popular here – everyone wants to touch her. We learned how to say “shy” (hazukashigaria no) because sometimes she gets really freaked out when old ladies come up close to her. But she’s actually getting used to it, and doesn’t seem to mind too much. The tourists seemed to magically disappear when we arrived and we had the place mostly to ourselves…

We left our shoes at the front (even Riley’s, she’s a human being too after all) and put on the the slippers (which look pretty funny on the boys) and wandered around. There were beautiful, serene gardens (think combed gravel with big rocks randomly placed throughout and pretty manicured trees and cherry blossoms) surrounded by railings that were exactly the right height for Riley.

She pretty much cruised through the whole place herself checking it out. At one point she decided to carry the camera bag around, which is pretty big with a long strap, so she spent a lot of time adjusting her grip and trying to swing the bag over her shoulder (or just dragging it along the ground).

At the end there was a big room where they served us hot tea and a cookie. We sat and relaxed while Riley walked around us, back and forth, in a half circle (still with the bag). We bought some fresh fruit on the way home… which Riley must have really been craving (she hasn’t had any in a couple days and usually at home eats fruit at every meal), she ate 2 whole bananas and a bunch of delicious strawberries. wowza. Also turns out she likes red bean sticky buns…

We stayed at a beautiful Buddhist temple called Shojoshin-in…

…which has rooms with tatami mats on the floor, a heater (it was freezing!), a tv (who would watch tv in a place like that??) and sliding doors for all the walls. Our room was right next to Brad and George’s (so we could open the sliding doors and make it connect), but other then that there didn’t seem to be anyone else on our hallway. You can tell because when you first enter the building you take off your shoes and put on a pair of slippers, which you then leave outside your room. Makes for a very clean building, it’s nice. While we were eating dinner in a different room (all vegetarian, but i don’t think we would have noticed since there was such variety, yum) they put out beds for us on the floor, including buckwheat pillows which are SO comfortable.

Riley was in performance mode during dinner and put on quite a show for Brad and George, making funny noises and faces and just generally being goofy.

After sitting in the hot bath for a little bit (supposed to be unisex, but we snuck in one together since we didn’t feel like sharing with strangers… we got caught coming out, but they didn’t seem to mind!), Sage and I fell right to sleep, even though it was barely 8pm.

For more Mt Koya pictures and videos, click here.