Day 13

Today Myra and I undertook the mighty undertaking of finding our way to Koyasan. Ani would have come with us if her hip hadn’t been bothering her so much. As it was, we set off around 8 and many transfers later, we arrived at Koyasan around 11:15. Koyasan is home to the world headquarters of Shingen Buddhism. It was pouring rain and we didn’t bring jackets. I brought an umbrella, but only one. We saw some temples and stuff

Kongobuji Temple,

the temple rock garden

a room inside

and a monk!

Before we found a clothing store and bought jackets. Imminently, our enjoyment of the trip increased by a four fold (or something like that) and we happily bought souvenirs and then visited our favorite part of Koyasan (which is a mountain, something I forgot to mention earlier). Okunoin Cemetery was a very large cemetery filled with the graves of peasants and lords alike.

(I have no idea what these are)

More interestingly, were the many graves belonging to famous figures from the the Sengoku period. Naturally, since we couldn’t read the kanji we couldn't always identify who was buried at the grave, but the audio guide numbers lead us to believe that they were someone important. The one we were able to identify belonged to Uesugi Kenshin, clan leader of the Echigo province during the Sengoku period. He was also a brilliant general. He was cool, because if he hadn’t died of unknown medical problems, he probably would have defeated Oda Nobunaga and the shogunate might never have existed. 

(I just figured out that you can add links! So cool!! From now on, you guys are gonna learn about stuff!)

Thus satisfied with our excursion we set homeward - we took a bus to the station, took the cable car to the train and were about to board the train when Myra realized she didn’t have her bag with her. She ran back to the cable car to get it, but it wasn’t there. Luckily for us, a station employee called up to the bus station, so by the time we got up there, they had determined it was not on the bus and they had sent someone back to the bus stop to check there. They let us wait inside the office with chairs and a heater. Lucky Myra, they found the bag brought it back to us, and we took the cable car back down to the train and boarded the train about an hour later than planned. Then three hours or so later, and many transfers later, we made it back to our apartment. Phew.