We said to ourselves – if we haven’t done a ryokan, we have to do a temple stay, so we left Osaka early in the morning to catch our metro, find lockers for our backpacks at Osaka Namba station (they are btw available almost everywhere), catch our sleepy morning train and a cable car to reach the zen Koya-San. There is really a wide variety of transport you can travel with in Japan. 🙂
As soon as we arrived in Koya, we were almost entirely alone. Impressively alone considering the crowds we encountered everywhere else. We checked in to our Zofokuin Temple, where monk Takao greeted us in Slovene. Yeah, seriously. 😮 We knew instantly that this was gonna be an extra special experience.
The temple has a relaxing garden with a pond and lovely Japanese style bedrooms with huge windows overlooking the garden and the path to the orange Konpon Daito Pagoda. And, it has an onsen.
After a quick nap to the sound of gongs for me and a Japanese lesson for Žiga, we went exploring our zen surroundings. We really took it easy this time, saw Konpon Daito and a few other temples quickly and after a 7/11 lunch (which has a cool picnic style setup in front of it, as it is almost the only place where you can get food in the middle of the day aka. between 3 pm and 7 pm), we grabbed our yukatas and went for some soaking. We were early so both of us had our baths completely to ourselves (of course, female and male onsen are separated) and after that, we were ready for our vegetarian temple style dinner.
Whatever we expected, it was not this. 😀 Literally everything we put in our mouths had a different taste to what we expected (note to self: just because something looks like dessert, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is one). But it was great anyway.
Temples close their doors at 9 o’clock, so we had an early night, listening to the sounds of the pond outside and at 9 this amazing elfish melody started playing, letting everybody know it was time for bed. Very “Lord of the rings” elves vibe. I have never heard anything like this before. At 6.30 the morning, a little bit less awesome melody told us it was time for a morning prayer, dedicated to the ancestors, prosperity of the temple and world peace. The guests participated (most of them a bit sleepy and a bit confused), but monks were fast to help us.
Morning prayer is probably the most interesting and different thing about staying in a temple. It offers a peek into a completely different world and it sort of feels like intruding on something private. But, a few chants and a bit of incense smoke later most of the guests seemed more relaxed about participating.
A quick bow and a look into Buddha’s eyes and we were already off to temple-stye breakfast, where the dinner situation repeated itself. Just because something looks like a pannacotta, it does not mean it is not tofu with soy sauce.
Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to this relaxing, zen place too soon (as usual). Temple stay is a very humbling experience. Seeing what monks do every day and how their lives are so completely different to what we’re used to is a very interesting thing to see if you’re in the neighborhood. I’d love to see more of it someday or do a few-day long temple stay to understand more of it.
Takao is btw working on his English, among other languages and preparing all sorts of additions and improvements to the temple (like leaflets with an explanation of the prayers and the temple life). So, if you come to Zofokuin later in the year, I am sure they will already be there.
PS: 100/100 Mbps internet connection is included in the temple stay for the ones who cannot stay offline. 😮
And now we’re on our way to explore the amazing Yayema islands. This will also be the last part of our trip. I cannot believe it went by so fast. 😮
