THE MAGICAL KII PENINSULA: THE KUMANO KODO PILGRIM ROUTE AND MONKS IN KOYASAN
The Kii peninsula formed part of the end of our round trip in Japan, after we'd covered longer distances around the country. We started off visiting the Kansai region in Osaka and Nara (read more on these cities in this post) and then continued to the Kii peninsula for a bit more off-the-beaten-track experience.
We visited a few outstanding places in Kansai on the Kii Peninsula: Koyasan and Hongu. The peninsula is the spiritual haven of Japan with so much to discover!
Hongu is in the center of the Kumano Kodo, an ancient pilgrimage trail network that is often compared to its European equivalent, the El Camino. Thousands come here each year to visit shrines on the beautiful route through forests and little villages, and to get purified by the time they reach Hongu. It was time for us too to join the pilgrims!
Koyasan is home of the Shingon Esoteric Buddhism, a type of Buddhism that was formed here, based on Chinese roots, in the 8th century. The religion is still actively practiced today in the monasteries of Koyasan where visitors are welcome to stay and learn more about Buddhism and the monks' life.
Hongu - On the pilgrim route to steaming onsens
Hongu is located in the heart of the mountainous Kii peninsula, South from Kyoto and Osaka. You have to take a train from Osaka, Kyoto or Kansai Airport to Kii-Tanabe or Shirahama (depending on where you want to walk) and then change to a local bus that connects the little villages along the route. It takes a bit of time to get to Hongu if you want to drop off your bag first before walking, but it's totally worth it for the authentic experience, with barely any foreign tourist around!
Hongu is the heart of the remote Kumano Kodo pilgrimage route, this is actually where the route ends, so you can decide to walk towards it as well. We found this Kumano Kodo website useful when planning our walk.
Japan's early emperors made pilgrimages into the area since the 9th century, later its popularity spread to nobles and priests and finally to common people too. The network of routes consists of several paths through forests and picturesque villages, leading to the Hongu Taisha, one of the three main temples in the region. These sacred sites and the routes have become UNESCO Heritage Sites and enjoy similar popularity to the El Camino route in Europe today. You can even get a joint medal if you do both the Camino and the Kumano Kodo!
View at the Hongu Taisha, where the Kumano Kodo ends
We decided to take the bus from Kii-Tanabe to Hongu to get rid of our backpack at our accommodation and took the bus back to a village a few hours' hike distance to walk back through picturesque villages, smaller shrines and cedar forests. It was a truly relaxing experience - no wonder people come here to walk on their own as pilgrims. A half-day non-stop rain the day after reduced our hike to this one afternoon, but we could still enjoy a lovely relaxing couple of days in the village and decided we'll need to come back to do a multi-day hike here some time in the future!
Views along the Kumano Kodo
Hongu Taisha entrance
Once pilgrims arrive to Hongu they can relax their aching muscles in the wonderful natural open-air steam baths that are formed in the river bed - an amazing phenomenon we've never seen before! You get a shovel from your ryokan, a traditional Japanese guesthouse, to dig a hole in the river pebbles where hot water would rise up from the ground. You can sit in this private hot water pool and control the temperature by letting some cold water in from the river. It's a lot of fun chatting with others sitting in their own steaming holes! Close to the bath several ryokans offer rooms with half-board service and all the luxury that comes with the typical ryokan experience - private indoor onsen, traditional room with tatami floor and fantastic food. We decided to try one of these ryokans, Ashita no Muri, with a steaming bath in the river literally just in front of it. It was just awesome!
Our peaceful onsen village next to Hongu
Our Alps-style ryokan and Szilveszter in his private hot pool!
Overnight in a monastery in Koyasan, the Land of Purity
Our plan was to take a bus from Hongu to Koyasan through the mountains, the quickest way, which is a 4-hour bus ride (as you can see on the map in this post). However, these plans were quickly forced to change when a couple of days before our journey a landslide in the heavy rains blocked this route. We didn't want to cancel this leg of the trip, so we had to go all the way back where we came, and travelled around six hours with uncountable changes of transportation to Koyasan. It was just too special to miss staying in a Buddhist temple with monks, attending a morning praying and meditation ceremony and eating vegetarian monk food presented by the monk apprentices themselves!
Koyasan is a village covered in thick forest and surrounded by eight mountain peaks. The main attraction here is the Buddhist monastery complex, which consists of 50+ monasteries, and guests can stay in about 25 of them to get a closer experience with the Shingon school of Esoteric Buddhism. As a monk explained to us, Japanese people consider Koyasan the place of purity.
Oku-no-in
The day of our arrival we went walking at night to the Oku-no-in, a forested Buddhist cemetery where Kobo Daishi, the founder of this branch of Buddhism, has a memorial hall, and is thought to mediate in his tomb since the 9th century, awaiting the arrival of the future Buddha. The cemetery is a truly spiritual place with thousands of stone lanterns, tall cedars and tombs of emperors and aristocrats, whose relatives wanted to ensure that their loved ones would be here when Kobo Daishi comes out of his tomb and interpret his heavenly message for humanity.
There are also organised walks in the cemetery, but as it is so close to the monasteries, we decided to go on our own, so that we can get back on time before the compulsory bed time in the monastery! It was a very mystical but also a bit scary walk at night.
Oku-no-in at night
Buddhist monasteries
First of all, to book a night in a monastery you need to think ahead of your trip. It is a rather complex process, as you can't just book a room online but have to contact the Koyasan Shukubo Association in email to see if they have availabilities for your dates. On their official website you can see all the different monasteries, but don't get too excited about specific choices, you should stay wherever there's availability. The experience should be similar in most of them..
At Muryokoin, the monastery we stayed, we had to follow the schedule of the day. We were served dinner at 5pm, had to finish our bath by 9pm and go to sleep early as at 6am the following day we had to be ready for the meditation ceremony. Our monastery, as all the others in the village, had a beautiful garden around and nicely decorated rooms. The dinner was a typical shojin-ryori vegan meal, that has to consist of five different meals, each prepared by different methods. As the student monks who served food did not speak any English we had to use our imagination finding out what we ate, and some of the food was new to us in both look and taste. One of them was the sesame tofu, a local speciality.
Our beautiful tatami-floor room
Dinner in our room and breakfast - served by monks
Our beautiful monastery garden
Just like in many other Japanese buildings, walls were made of paper in the lodge, so we could easily hear and even see through the neighbouring room. Although we were provided with a heater and a nice warm robe, as the room also lacked insulation, when the heating turned off automatically at night, we woke up frozen in 12 degrees.
The praying and meditation session in the morning lasted (a bit unexpected) 1.5 hours, and consisted of the monks chanting and burning sticks with wishes that we could write on them beforehand. The thinking behind this is that as long as we have wishes we can't be happy as these prevent us being so – burning them symbolically unblocks our happiness. At around 5.45am hopefully we were creative enough about what to burn with our sticks!
The following day we walked around Koyasan, visited the cemetery again, this time in day light, and also other shrines and sights in the village. We left relaxed and gained a very special memory!
Oku-no-in in daylight
