I awoke to my alarm at 6:20am. Morning prayer in the main hall was at 6:30am, and I wanted to attend since 1) it is a unique experience and 2) I was the only other human in the temple.

I was greeted with warmth from a space heater, and the smell of incense as I took my shoes off and entered. I regret that I didn’t take my phone with me, but I just enjoyed the decor of the temple with its lit-lanterns, the fresh-cut flowers, and countless other shrine elements that I did not understand the significance of.

My monk chanted the morning prayers (by himself), which included ringing some gongs and clashing some cymbals. The total time was about 20 minutes, and then I was escorted to my private breakfast.

After breakfast, I went back to my room and read some more. Checkout was at 9am, so at that point I walked around the streets of Koyasan. The temperature was rising with the sun, and I was greeted with a beautiful clear blue sky above. A perfect day for a hike.

But first, a cup of coffee.

I am not sure what this was of brewing coffee is called, but its what I got. It was quite good.

After coffee, Nate and I walked around the shrines in town and then took the Choishi Michi trail for a short hike.

Koyasan was fantastic. Many of the temple structure have been rebuilt repeatedly because they were destroyed by fires from lightning strikes over the years. Most seemed to date back to the 1500’s or 1800’s. The most recent? 2015.

A few hours of travel later, we were back to Kyoto. Our train discarded us in a part of the station I had not seen yet. Really cool architecture.

Out the window you can see Kyoto Tower, atop a hotel. 

We popped into a restaurant nearby for dinner. The Sashimi was pretty good. We also ordered Japanese minnows and fried octopus. The minnows were interesting. The octopus was overcooked and very tough / chewy.

That about wraps it up. Its Wednesday mid-day in Japan, and its time for me to get out for a walk and some food.