Koya-san is a town built around temples, founded by a monk called Kukai aka Kobo Desai in the 9th century. This was one stupendous bad-ass of a monk. Sent to China as an ambassador for 2 years, he returned to Japan to set up his own monastery. With permission from the shogun he trekked up into the mountains, until he found an auspicious site in a natural basin surrounded by 8 mountains, like the leaves of the lotus-flower.
The mountains did not initially agree with Sarah. Having been rudely awoken at the top of the funicular, bundled into a bus and dumped in the middle of the monastery town, she was not in a happy frame of mind. It took her a good half hour of stomping around town, uttering phrases such as 'This place is unnecessarily complicated', 'Why did we bother coming here?' and 'These temples are poorly organised' (whilst I kept my head down) before she was in any kind of mood to take in any of the beautiful shrines and temples.
Having founded his monastery and many of the temples within it, Kukai then withdrew to meditate in a shrine in the forest on the outskirts of the town. Another legend says he did not die, but is merely meditating in the shrine, waiting for the reincarnated Buddha to arrive so that they can team up and finally bring peace to the world. With this ultimate showdown in mind, people asked for their remains to be placed near the shrine, so now the entire forest is covered in thousands of tombstones – some ancient and moss-covered, others brand new with fresh incense burning in front of them. We walked through this forest cemetery to get to Kukai's shrine. The afternoon light filtering down through the trees and mist, and the sense of stillness made it a pretty magical experience.
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