• Boat to Busan

    The other day, I took a ferry from Fukuoka, Japan, to Busan. Busan is the 2nd largest city in South Korea and is on the beach. It is beautiful.  I was only going to stay one night, but I found a tour, so I made another night of hotel reservations.  The good thing with having…

  • Hypocenter

    On my last day in Nagasaki,  I left the temple with the turtle and Kannon and started walking to Peace Park. On my way, I saw a broken gate and two trees that survived the atomic blast. These were remnants of the atomic blast. Two trees that were originally thought to be dead but grew…

  • Last day in Nagasaki

    My last day of walking around Nagasaki,  I visited a temple that I saw out of my hotel room window. I saw it at just the right angle, and it looked like a giant turtle head. I just happened to open my curtains and saw it, so I figured I would walk up to it.…

  • Walking in footsteps of the distant past

    Late summer 1945, an 18 year old Marine, just out of Paris Island, boards a ship in the Pacific Ocean and heads west towards the Pacific theater, where our forces were battling the Japanese military.  Sometime after August 9th, he lands in Nagasaki and is part of the peacekeeping/occupation force. When he landed, he was…

  • 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…

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