We, very leisurely, left Osaka early in the morning and slowly made our way to the train station to get to Koya-san. We went to a department store to find a bag for me to carry all my goodies in, only to find that the bags I had in mind cost upwards of 20,000 yen.
`forget that` I said.
we then went for breakfast and then hit up the post office, where I was to spend over an hour trying to mail a box full of treasures to myself in Nagoya. Hopefully this will all go off without a hitch, and I wont end up like the guy next to me in line (from Detroit) yelling at the postal workers that his package was supposed to have arrived a month ago.
`good luck` he said to me.
My heart sank a bit.
From there we were on our way to Koya-san, which is a small village up in a basin of a mountain where there are over 100 Buddhist temples. Along the way, I made friends with an elderly Japanese woman. At least I think we were friends, she diddn`t speak a lick of english, but she was very kind. She gave me a little pack of tissue paper and told me what the advertisement on the back was (in Japanese). She then got off the train at her stop, after many nods of me not knowing a word she was saying to me. Again, she was very nice and friendly. After taking a train, then a train, another train, and a cable car, and finally a bus… we make it to the `town centre`… Its pitch black outside by this point, and we are tired as hell. We decide to go to the only hostel in town for the night and spend the next night at a temple lodge.
We very quickly find the hostel and approach a drunken clerk (at least I think he was drunk, he smelled of booze and stumbled with his words a bit)
`reservation?` he said
`nope` I replied
A shocking look came over his face which only concerned me a bit. He showed us the only room left in the hostel which was all the way up in the attic. He was very apologetic that this was the only space available. He revealed the room to us, after climbing a very steep staircase and crawling through an oompaloompa sized door. The room was magnificent. It was very large (with very low ceilings), it had a window, lamp, TV, a table with a few chairs, and a large log strangely placed across the centre of the room. It was the fanciest attic I`ve seen in my life, so far.

The next morning we left to find our self a temple to stay in. The lady at the tourist information centre told us that many of the temples were very full for the night, and that the one we were to be staying at would have an outhouse and paper walls separating the rooms from one another. That was fine, we said. Having booked our accommodation for the night, we headed off to get some breakfast. We went to a little restaurant by the tourist centre. I ordered Udon noodles, and Deena vegetable rice. During our meal I made conversation with an elderly Japanese man, who also diddn`t really speak any english. He was talking about how Canada was cold in the winter and warm in the summer (at least thats what I gathered from playing a spontaneous game of Japanese style charades). He was also very friendly and cheerful, and in great shape for a 72 year old mountain man. From there we headed off to launder our clothes. We were both very stinky, more so Deena, and felt that it would be a fun experience (doing laundry in the mountains).

It was time to check into the temple, I was really looking forward to this experience. We were very cheerfully greeted at the front entrance by a monk who was happy to check us in. He was a very tall man, but acted very small and humble. He asked us what time we would be eating dinner and bathing, and took our drink orders for dinner.　He walked us to our room, down a very very clean wooden corridor and showed us in. The room was magnificent. Not only were there solid walls between the rooms, but we also had an indoor washroom. After dropping off our bags, we went for a stroll through the town. We looked at some temples and walked through a very nice and almost eerie Buddhist cemetery.
Finally, it was time for this very refined Buddhist dinner I`ve been hearing so much about. We were walked into a rather large room, with 4 little tables and 2 floor mats, quite the private meal. It was a strictly vegetarian meal consisting of 2 kinds of tofu, various pickled mountain veggies, some sort of seaweed dish, some kind of lemon soup (to fight the mountain scurvy), white rice and a rice cake they call `devils tongue` (I believe).
After dinner we waited in our room for bath time. After a half hour there was a very quiet, but persistent, knocking at my door.
`sumi, sumi, sumi, sumi…` he said, until I opened the door.
`this way` he said
by the time i got to the bottom of the staircase, he was already waaaay down the hallway by the bathhouse. My fat feet don`t really fit into these slim slippers they gave me, which makes walking (quickly) a challenge. The bath was lovely, I had a good soak in the stone hot tub and then washed myself clean.
Then Deena showered. Then we went to bed.
early the next morning, around 6:30 in the AM we were greeted by another very persistent knocking at the door.
`sumi, sumi, sumi, sumi…` I answered the door and we were off to the morning ceremonies.
I diddn`t know what to expect, as I know nothing about Buddhist culture. Our favourite monk walked us to the ceremony hall. We entered a room full of ornaments, statues and all sorts of religious things that I diddn`t know of. In the centre of the room was 2 stools, for Deena and I. I thought that there would be other tourists here also observing the ritual, but it was just the two of us. We sat and watched them chant (a) very mesmerizing prayer(s?). I wonder what they were saying.
`zee zee wuh wuh nai uh gee wah zee zee..` this went on for about 30 min. There was some cymbal crashing throughout, and some gong dinging with a little bit of bell bonking. It sounded neat, but nothing I would put on my ipod. Now was time for the tourist interaction. We got on our knees and were told to put 3 pinches of some dried plant on a burning incense. Then, after a little more chanting, the main priest in the centre of the shrine turns to us. From behind he looked like a really old man, but was surprised to see him as a young man when he turned.
`thank you very much for staying and observing our ceremony, we hope you enjoy your time here. Breakfast will be served… arigato`.. or something like that , I can`t remember it word for word. It was a really great experience watching them do what they do… whatever it is that they were doing.
Breakfast was similar to dinner, but with other styles of pickled veggies, miso soup, seaweed and some sort of tofu and bean pancake. There was also what looked like a baby plum, which was EXTREMELY sour, and somewhat tasty.
After breakfast we took a little nap and I charged my dead ipod for the trip that lay ahead. We left the temple and headed to the cable car station where we would take the train back to Osaka. On the cable car we met our Belgish/kazakastanian chums… I knew we would be seeing them again, somewhere. We rode the train back to Osaka together, and one of them psychoanalyzed Deena with some mind games (quite accurately too). When we got to Osaka we said goodbye and went on our way.

We make it to Hiroshima around 4 and find out that all the hostels and hotels are booked.
`this is preposterous` I thought.
We then decide that we should stay the night at one of these luxury Internet cafes. We checked it out, and it turns out that it would actually be cheaper to spend the night in a private internet booth with a TV and internet than an actual hostel. I opted for the room with a bed and Deena selected the reclining chair option. This was definitely more worth while than just a straight up hostel. They supply us with towel, slippers, toothpaste and brush, and a locker for the night.. and all for 2300 yens! I should also mention that there is an all you can drink fountain pop machine, espresso machine, soup and soft serve ice cream. Man, am I going to be sick tonight!
Before we got here, we killed some time around the city (since all the museums and such were closed for the day). We had a nice soba noodle dinner at a tiny hole in the wall and saw some action on the street shortly afterwards. I wasn`t sure what was going on, but there was a tall American looking guy holding onto a pole with a small Japanese man pulling on his bag with all his might. They were both screaming at each other while the obvious tourist`s friends were only watching on. Deena had pointed out that the Japanese man was wearing a jazz club t shirt, and we had noticed smoke or steam billowing out of the jazz club as we walked by. I wonder what was going on.
This post has gone on long enough… Tomorrow we are to check out the city and then make our way to Nagasaki for a festival we only found out about today. The whole city`s accomodation is already booked up, so we may be staying at another internet cafe, if we get lucky again.

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