Sleeping With the Monks

I went to a temple overnight last weekend. It was in to Koyosan, which is about 4-5 hours away by train/subway/cable ca r(!)/bus in the eastern part of Wakayama prefecture (a prefecture is like a province). There used to be a sort of "monk university" there and they have temples you can stay at (originally for pilgrims, but open to anyone, Buddhism is very open to all things, as there is no absolute truth, or so I think I understand from a monk who was talking to me). I went up with some friends from the area and met up with a bigger group of JETs. Group travel can be overwhelming but its nice to not have to plan anything.

We got there around 12:30-1 ish, wandered about, found the "international cafe" run by a French woman and her Japanese husband. AMAZING food. brown rice! real espresso. fantastic. found the group, stashed our stuff at the temple. Then we went touring about where the "university" part was originally, along with checking out the largest rock garden, eating the monks dinner (high in tofu in various states, which didn't seem to go over to well, but I liked it) made jizu/prayer bead bracelets (the first 6 for your good qualities, then next 14 are wishes/dreams/hopes, and then 6 more for your bad qualities) and after a little onsen/public bath goodness, we went to bed feeling very relaxed, Zen even.

We woke up early (6am on the weekend, gah) the next morning to go to the morning prayers of the monks who live in that temple. Imagine a low ceilinged dark rectangular room, 3/4ths of the room is where the monks do their praying and the other 1/4 (long and skinny)th is for people to watch. In the praying bit, there is a dividing wall and on one side is a monk sitting in front of a small fire which he puts spices and oils onto. The other half has monks praying and chanting, there were about 7 or 8 monks there. Some were Japanese, one Swiss, on woman from Holland, it was eclectic, like I said, Buddhism is welcoming.

After prayers we went to breakfast (more tofu) and then toured the giant cemetary. It was over 2km long and full of graves, monuments, and little buddhas. Some of us ducked out a bit early as it was cold, starting to rain, and we were tired. We went back to international cafe for more amazing lunch (leek quiche, chocolate cake, espresso) and made it there before the huge rush of the others from the tour ruined the atmostphere. We managed to catch an earlier train home, which put me home by 5, (only 4 1/2 hours) .