Gone Up the Mountain

Yesterday I visited Koyasan in Wakayama, south of Osaka, with my friend Tiffany and her boss.

Koyasan, or Mount Koya, is covered with temples, museums, and cemeteries.

It's also a functioning town, high up on the mountain, with a college, a high school, a fire department, and many stores.

First we visited the cemetery, easily the strangest and most impressive cemetery I've ever visited. The first thing I saw was a rocket.

This cemetery has company plots for some of the largest companies in Japan. Employees who die on the job are buried here.

The plot for the UCC coffee company has two great urns that are kept filled with coffee.

There are many pet mausoleums onsite, too.

This is a memorial for all the ants killed in Japan, an apology for killing them as pests:

Tombs further in are more traditional.

We went inside the temple at the centre of the cemetery where no photography is allowed. We listened to a monk chanting in the amazing, dark interior decorated with thousands of lanterns. Little candles illuminated gold Buddhist statues.

Afterwards, we visited Kongobuji, the headquarters of Shingon-shu Buddhism.

Its rock gardens are the largest in Japan and are intended to represent dragons "emerging from a sea of clouds".

The interior is filled with beautiful painted doors. Signs prohibited not only photographs but sketches as well. We sat for a time in one very comfortable, large room with cushioned seats and tatami floors as a monk gave instructions on meditation.

Afterwards, we visited a number of pagodas in the area, some of them as old as the 12th century.

Most of them, though, are less than a century old because the original buildings burned down and were rebuilt several times.

Finally, we visited the Koyasan Reihokan Museaum, which houses many incredible artefacts. I saw mandala tapestries, scrolls upon which 11th century poets actually wrote, and astounding wood and gold statues, most of them dating from the Heian era (794-1185).

My favourite was a statue of the Heavenly General Jinja-daisho sculpted by Kaikei in the Heian era. This fellow has a necklace of skulls, a placidly smiling human face in his belly button, and elephant heads on his knees. Not only that, but each elephant head has four tusks. It's a work of genius.

All of these museums and shrines are surrounded by beautiful forests.