Japan - Koyasan

And we're onto the second day of Japan touring! After a brief stay in Osaka, we travelled in the morning up to Koyasan (which is a little bit south of Osaka). As we got higher up Mount Koya, the weather changed from rather pleasant to cold and snowy. I think we travelled 800m up the mountain, by train, funicular and bus - that bus journey was a white knuckle ride I tell ya! (Well, for someone with a terror of ice it was, the bus driver seemed fine driving along steep icy roads with large chasms of death on one side of them!)
We did see some lovely views along the way though, but of course I didn't photograph any of them and just got these instead:



Koyasan is the headquarters of Shingon Buddhism, which means there are A LOT of temples there, and we even stayed in a monastry run by monks! Take a look at our digs:



We had a walk round the town and saw a whole bunch of temples and a rather large cemetery:



Afterwards we had a meal prepared by the monks at our monastry (and while we were having dinner they made up the beds in our room!)
I can't remember everything that was in the meal,... it was vegetarian, there was tofu, tempura vegetables, noodles, miso soup? I think... But yes, heres an after shot of my plate! (Forgot to take one before!)



The morning after we got up very early (ok, like 6.30am) to watch the monks pray and their fire ceremony - which we got to participate in (thankfully not too much involved as I would have made a bigger fool of myself than I usual!)

So there we go, thats Koyasan! I'm trying not to waffle on too much in each blog post, or cram too many places in...slow and steady wins the race, but I'm sure the next few blog posts will come thick and fast anyways.
I'm hoping to draw up an illustrated diary of my time in Japan, and these blog posts are kind of helping me to sift through what I want to draw for each page, so at least thats helpful!

Blog post on Hiromshima coming soon!