Koyasan
Autumn has arrived in all its splendour. We ascend to the top of the Koyasan temple mountain in a monorail, surrounded by trees glowing brightly in their red and yellow foliage. After a stroll through the small town and its vast ancient cemetery we bed down for the night in a monastery. We join the monks for morning prayers in the darkness of their sanctuary. It is unheated apart from a small gas heater and the candles lit one by one by a monk slowly making his way around the room. From behind a paper wall, another monk with ancient features enters the sanctuary. As the younger monk begins the prayer rituals, his chants punctuated by the low rumbling coughs of the older monk, it dawns on us that these two are the last inhabitants of the monastery. With more than fifty active monastic orders, Koyasan is one of the most sacred Buddhist sites in Japan. We seem to have stumbled on the only congregation slowly fading away. Thanking the monks for their hospitality we leave for a last walk under the canopies of towering trees, past temples and tombs bathed in glorious sunshine.
Next stop: Naoshima.