Day 19 – We took a wrong turn on the Kinki Expressway and ended up in Buddhist Disneyland

We’re like sharks. Well sharks with wheelie suitcases. We can’t stay still for long. We have to keep moving forward. And today our forward momentum was carrying us to Koyasan. A small Buddhist town up in the hills about and 90 minutes due south of Osaka by car on a very windy road.

And car was the way we had chosen to travel. Hire cars aren’t too expensive in Japan – comparable to train fares in some instances. So we packed up, picked up (the car) and decided the first destination in our Toyota Yaris should be a decent cafe. Somewhere on the backstreets of Osaka. Should be easy right? Wrong. It was complicated and confusing – but luckily most Japanese drivers drive slowly and calmly (at least by Australian standards) so we were able to get our coffee fix with only a few wrong turns and no one flipping me the bird.

For my next trick I needed to negotiate my way out of Japan’s second biggest city and onto the irresistibly named Kinki Expressway. That part of the trip was supposed to take 20 minutes. 40 minutes later we triumphantly merged onto the Kinki… heading in the wrong direction. Eventually we got our heads and the car turned around and made some proper progress. Once we got off the freeway, the houses and high rises eventually gave way to greenery, rice paddies and trees. As we climbed, the road got narrower and windier – it reminded me a little of sections of the road up to the summit of kunanyi. With all the recent rain there was water everywhere, either side of the road and sometimes on the road. But it was a lovely drive and we stopped at a lovely restaurant wedged by the side of the road in a deep valley. I think it was called Otemoto – and their specialty was tomatoes – which they grew in abundance by the side of the river. I had a fab tomato garlic spaghetti thing and Jules had omurice with homemade tomato sauce. Sooo good.

Not long afterwards we made it to Koyasan. Japan Guide website says this about the town:

“Mount Koya (高野山, Kōyasan) is the center of Shingon Buddhism, an important Buddhist sect which was introduced to Japan in 805 by Kobo Daishi (also known as Kukai), one of Japan’s most significant religious figures. A small, secluded temple town has developed around the sect’s headquarters that Kobo Daishi built on Koyasan’s wooded mountaintop. It is also the site of Kobo Daishi’s mausoleum.”

That’s the facts. My impression, and I don’t mean this in any sort of flippant or dismissive way is that Koyasan is a kind of Buddhist Disneyland. It is so beautiful, and the temples are so impeccably maintained, and the gardens are all so perfectly laid out it’s almost doesn’t feel real. But at the same time it also feels – and I’m reluctant to use this word – authentic. There I’ve said it. Anyway we loved Koyasan – especially after we did the night tour through Okunoin Cemetery!

Yep the tour takes you through Okunoin Cemetery – which apparently holds over 200,000 graves – some new, some dating back centuries. Our tour was led by a local Esoteric Buddhist monk called Nobe. He told us he’d been a monk for 15 years – but later I heard him telling someone about his wild days in Manchester in the early 2000s. Maybe he was a Happy Mondays fan? Anyway of course it started bucketing rain at the start of the tour – but as we walked deeper and deeper into the cemetery it eased and eventually stopped. There was just mist to add to the vibe. It was a totally ace experience.

Nobe shared some pearls of Esoteric Buddhist wisdom with us (some of which I found quite profound). Esoteric Buddhism is apparently all about contemplating the hidden, the unseen and the untouchable parts of ourselves and our environment. He also shared a bit about the founder of Esoteric Buddhism (the dude who also founded Koyasan in the year 816 AD), a monk by the name of Kobo Daishi (not to be confused with Kaiser Soze from the Usual Suspects). Apparently Kobo Daishi locked himself in the temple to meditate and never came out. They say he may be in there still meditating even now. If that’s the case he’s gonna need a razor. At the end of the tour we were left to wander back to our accommodation on our own through the cemetery in the misty dark. The best.

Driving in Osaka can be nerve wracking. Luckily I had recently trimmed my nails.

Expressway view.

Such a windy road. So many tunnels. On the way to Koyasan.

Lunch at a spectacularly good restaurant in the hills on the way to Koyasan. Tomatoes were their thing and they knew how to cook them. We would have bought a dozen jars of their sauce but we didn’t want any trouble from Australian customs.