Category: travel

  • Final stamp

    I took the trains down to Osaka and stayed here for 2 days. This morning, I woke up and took 2.5 hours worth of trains and buses to visit To-ji in Kyoto. Another temple associated with Kūkai. Kobo Daishi)  It was a beautiful day for walking around and seeing the complex.

  • Eternal resting

    The other day, I woke up early and walked in the rain to the mausoleum of Kūkai at 530am.  He is believed to be still with us in eternal meditation. The morning prayer was about an hour, and I wish I could have taken pictures. It was dark, lit by candles and orange paper lanterns.…

  • More pictures

    This town is full of Temples and a large graveyard

  • More pictures – Main Temple

  • Mount Koya

    Mount Kōya (高野山, Kōya-san) is a large temple settlement in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan to the south of Osaka. In the strictest sense, Mount Kōya is the mountain name (sangō) of Kongōbu-ji Temple, the ecclesiastical headquarters of the Kōyasan sect of Shingon Buddhism. First settled in 819 by the monk Kūkai, Mount Kōya is primarily known as the world headquarters of the Kōyasan Shingon sect of Japanese Buddhism.…

  • Back to the beginning

    So when I started a little more than a month ago, my brain was over stimulated with all the new things and trying to figure out where to sleep the next day, where to walk, and what I needed, I never posted pictures from the first temple. So, I made my way back to Temple…

  • Cable car

    I walked down from atop the mountain at Temple 84. I went the wrong way and decided to traverse what looked like a trail, but it was very steep, rocky, and slick. There were ropes to help me get down, the only time I have fallen on the trip, but I was already leaning so far…

  • Closing in on the end of the 1st part of the adventure.

    Woke up and made my way to Temple 84 – Yashimaji. Believed to have been founded in 754, Kūkai changed it over to the Shingon Sect around 815.

  • Photos from my new friend

    Met a woman from Taiwan, and she took some pictures of me on the trail.

  • Across the mountains

    It was about a 2 hour walk through the woods, up and down these mountains. With it raining the last few days, the trail was not in good shape, and there were signs to beware of wild pigs. Other posts I described as walking on dry creek beds. This one, I was walking through running…