Koyasan: The Legendary Stuff of Legend

Before we left for our two-week trip to Japan, a friend gifted us David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, a novel about Dutch people in Japan in the late 1700s (so basically, it was perfect for us). Half way through the book, the story takes a gothic turn when a main character is spirited away to a remote Shinto shrine hidden in the mountains, run by an evil abbot who hides his salacious and murderous plots behind a veneer of religious ritual. I was just reaching the dramatic climax the night we slept at a remote Buddhist temple high in the mountains, surrounded by towering cedars, a sprawling graveyard, and the nocturnal sounds of the forest.

Spending the night on Mt. Koya (Koyasan) was my favorite of favorite experiences in Japan precisely because it was the legendary stuff of legend - the stuff you read about in books but don't expect to experience for yourself. And in turn, every part of our 24 hours in Koyasan was my favorite part, which, when you think about it, is an exceedingly impressive return on travel investment.

Favorite Part #1: Getting to Koyasan.  Osaka, the closest major city to Koyasan, is huge, sprawling, and disorientating to newcomers - the Houston of Japan. Somewhere within the metropolis of Osaka, you switch to Koyasan's private rail line: just two diminutive cars on narrow gage track that winds through increasingly remote farmland (trees weighed down by bright orange persimmons) and then up into the mountains (verdant forests of bamboo and cedar green, filtering the sunlight to a gentle dimness).  In between isolated one-room stations losing their battle with the forest moss, there are sudden vistas of the rolling folds of the mountains, green fading to gray with distance.

Playing chicken on the funicular.

When the train can climb no higher, you switch to a funicular.  The mountainside is so steep here that the rows of seats inside the cable car are nearly vertical.  The short ride tests your faith in the reliability of Japanese engineering.

But that's not all.  After you safely disembark, there is still a bus ride into the heart of Koyasan, down a narrow curving road kept in perpetual darkness by the surrounding forest.  The road opens up into the central intersection of Koyasan, and suddenly everything is white walls and sunshine.

A Japanese Welcome

This is a story about hospitality.

First, some scene-setting: Our first day in Japan, jet lag woke us up at 4:30 in the morning.  That gave us enough time to squeeze three days of activities into one.  By 8:30 that night, we had explored Tokyo's early morning fish market, spent four hours on trains and as many hours hiking around the mountainside shrines of Nikko, and navigated Tokyo's subway system during rush hour to meet someone for drinks in one of city's flashy high-rise districts.  By the time we made it back across the metropolis to our quiet neighborhood, our legs were jelly, our brains were fried, and our old friend jet lag was back with a vengeance.  We also had not yet had dinner.

Problem is, our hotel was in such a traditional neighborhood of the big city, there was no English anywhere in sight.   This was one of the few times in Japan where we had to struggle to decipher Japanese characters, and the hand-drawn map from our innkeeper that marked all his favorite local restaurants was defeating our travel-weary eyes.  Add to this that the Japanese, like the Dutch, tend to eat early - so by 8:30 on a Monday night, many of the noodle shops and family restaurants had already closed.

The Yanaka neighborhood

So there we are, on a poorly lit backstreet in the Yanaka district, looking back and forth from our crumpled little map to the name of an establishment as though it would all suddenly become clear to us, even though it assuredly wouldn't.  We were totally spent.

The Trees of Veenkade

It's been more than a year since we left The Hague: 15 months, in fact.  Since then, we've driven across the United States, settled into Portland, and gotten married - which explains my blog silence for most of 2012 (at some point, I will re-post my Oregon travelogues from the wedding website).  That was followed by two honeymoons to Hawaii and Japan {{awkward throat-clearing and modest blushing at excessive travel indulgence}}.  And then I applied for a job that will take us back to Boston next summer.  Never a dull moment.

In the meantime, in a fit of nostalgia about the Netherlands, I have compiled a year's worth of pictures of the trees that lined our canal in the Hague.  (Veenkade translates loosely to "peat wharf.")  It's the equivalent of posting baby pictures: these mean a lot to me and Jeff, and there's a slight chance that you will find them moderately interesting as well.

At our arrival in October 2010

During the snow storms of December 2010

Midnight on New Year's Eve

January 2011

Biking to work in June 2011

Canal construction in August 2011

September 2011: Instant nostalgia as we leave Veenkade.