I packed the night before, so all I had to do was wake up and go meet the guys (Abe, Kenny, and David) at the station for Koya-san. We were all a bit nervous about certain people, (cough, Abe) getting there on time, but miraculously everyone showed up on time and things went smoothly without a hitch. We hopped on the right train and caught all the correct connecting trains go us! We left Kyoto Eki at 11:00 and all in all The trip took us about three hours. The smaller local train rides were rather gorgeous with mountains and bamboo groves all around, although not as scenic as the trip out to Shirokawa-go. We even got to ride a cable car. Fun!
We made it to the ryokan, which also happened to be a Buddhist temple, just on time for check in. When we first decided to go to Koya-san, we were planning on shelling out about 7000 yen a piece to stay overnight at this ryokan/temple. But being the college students that we are, we didn't book the ryokan until the Tuesday before and at that time the only room that was left was the most expensive one. This was almost enough to deter us, but we reasoned that we didn't know the next time we'd be in Japan and that from heresay, it would probably be worth it.
Our not so humble (AWESOME!) abode.
Fast forward to check in, turns out that instead of booking one of the rooms in the temple complex, we got a guest cottage less than a minute away from the temple and a very short walk away from Okonoin, Koya's famous graveyard. Don't worry, it's not as morbid as it sounds. Our room, I mean our house was awesome. There was the main room with a kotatsu. Two rooms for sleeping and an extra room for...awesomeness. Our room of awesomeness. There were also three different styles of toilet and a shower/ofuro. It was awesome.
Wandering. Wandering.
Once we dropped off our luggage we were kind of hungry so we wandered around Koya-san for a bit until we stumbled upon a tucked away combini. We were going to find somewhere to eat, but our guest house had a garden, so we figured, what better place than our own private garden. Great. After that we just lounged about and washed up for dinner. Dinner was a vegetarian meal, much like the meal on Monday. It was pretty cool. And by cool I mean delicious.
Following dinner we went to the graveyard. It was really nice and so huge. These pictures don't do it justice. I'm hoping to steal pictures from Abe or David later. They have those big fancy expensive cameras. We wandered around there until it was dark and then we wandered our way back to our guest cottage. I decided to take advantage of the ofuro at the temple while the boys made another conbini run.
The ofuro was awesome. There was no one in there, so I had it all to myself. I basically swam/floated around the giant ofuro all by my lonesome. When I returned the boys had purchased some sake and snacks, and that is pretty much how we occupied our evening. A tame tasteful night sipping sake and munching on yummies.
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