Training Log Archive: simmoIn the 1 days ending Nov 15, 2019: |
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Friday Nov 15, 2019 #
Note
More sessions of general walking around, with a bus ride between. Arranged for cases to be forwarded on to tomorrow night's hotel, so we don't have to lug them for distances of 1km or more between hotels and bus stops. We're staying in a buddhist temple tonight, so don't really need to carry much more than a change of underwear and our IT gear.
From the hotel to the bus station to buy tickets (for some reason they're not on sale until the day of the journey), then to Kurasu and back for coffee - around 2.5kms all up. Then on the bus to Koyasan, a sacred place for the Japanese with many temples and ther religious sites. A remote valley in the mountains at 900m asl, and to day it was freezing - minus 1 to 12, and even colder tomorrow.
On arrival we walked up to Okunoin, where the monk who founded Koyasan - Kobo Daishi in 816ad - is said to reside in 'eternal meditation concentrating on the liberation of all beings' in a vast mausoleum surrounded by thousand year old cedars and a clear mountain stream. The trees are really impressive, tall and thick, and there are thousands of them, but they are outnumbered by the 200,000 gravestones and memorial pagodas in the park.
Next we walked to our overnight accommodation at a temple (with real monks) for a typical Japanese room, onsen, and vegetarian dinner and breakfast (dinner was delicious). Then we walked on to visit a large complex of temples and pagodas, and on further to the Koyasan gate on a saddle with a view beyond to rows of mountains and supposedly the inland sea - not visible due to haze. Sunsets here are supposed to be specatacular, but we didn't want to wait for an hour in the cold, so returned to our temple for a ( very) hot bath.
Total for the day around 6 kms. Off to the Kumano Kudo pilgrimage tomorrow where the real walking begins.
From the hotel to the bus station to buy tickets (for some reason they're not on sale until the day of the journey), then to Kurasu and back for coffee - around 2.5kms all up. Then on the bus to Koyasan, a sacred place for the Japanese with many temples and ther religious sites. A remote valley in the mountains at 900m asl, and to day it was freezing - minus 1 to 12, and even colder tomorrow.
On arrival we walked up to Okunoin, where the monk who founded Koyasan - Kobo Daishi in 816ad - is said to reside in 'eternal meditation concentrating on the liberation of all beings' in a vast mausoleum surrounded by thousand year old cedars and a clear mountain stream. The trees are really impressive, tall and thick, and there are thousands of them, but they are outnumbered by the 200,000 gravestones and memorial pagodas in the park.
Next we walked to our overnight accommodation at a temple (with real monks) for a typical Japanese room, onsen, and vegetarian dinner and breakfast (dinner was delicious). Then we walked on to visit a large complex of temples and pagodas, and on further to the Koyasan gate on a saddle with a view beyond to rows of mountains and supposedly the inland sea - not visible due to haze. Sunsets here are supposed to be specatacular, but we didn't want to wait for an hour in the cold, so returned to our temple for a ( very) hot bath.
Total for the day around 6 kms. Off to the Kumano Kudo pilgrimage tomorrow where the real walking begins.