Mt. Koya

We jumped on a train and met Jon's colleague at the Osaka train station. After serving in the same mission as Jon, he went to a University in Japan, married a Japanese woman and has lived many years in Japan. He now lives in the U.S., but was here for business also. He wanted to join us at our next stop - the Buddhist temple, so he was kind enough to drive us. We piled in the van and headed to Mt. Koya for the night. It was the second worst drive I have ever been on. (The first being the drive to the Sea of Galilee, but that is a different blog post.) Everyone was feeling so sick from the winding road. Two hours later, we arrived at the beautiful and serene birthplace of Japanese Buddhism.


On the drive, we found this random tower along the road.  We were intrigued, so we took the exit to find out what it was.  Turns out it was a religious building.

We were so very happy to get out of the car, and arrive at our Buddhist Temple inn.

We were once again served a fancy, traditional Japanese dinner.  We arrived just in time and hurried in to the dining hall.  The town has many buddhist temples which are run by monks.  They feed you dinner and breakfast and there is a mandatory prayer meeting you need to go to in the morning.  Because of their peace with all around them (including animals), the dinner is a vegetarian meal.  I was a little unsure what we would be served, but it was very good.

Everything is displayed so beautifully.  They take so much care with their presentation of food here.

After dinner we were excited to go to our little cottage room.  The surrounding gardens were beautiful and it was a very peaceful place to be.  This is the view from our front porch.

This is the front of the temple.

This is the entryway.

It looks very simple from the outside.

This is the short walk to our little cottage.

I really love these stone lanterns.  They are everywhere here and they are all slightly different.  

Here is a closer view of our rooms.  You can see Jon relaxing on the porch in front, on the right.   It rained for a little while, and then stopped.  Everything smelled fresh and clean.  

 

This was the main hall of our cottage, with the porch on the left and the rooms on the right.

The "living room" area.  No air conditioning, just fans.

The boys' room.

The girls' room.

Our private bath.  You fill the tub with hot water and then keep it warm with the wood covers on the left.  You shower and shampoo with the hand held shower head, then soak in the tub.

It was so nice to have so much space to ourselves.  (Especially a private bathroom!)