Koyasan is a mountain village featuring many Buddhist monasteries where you can stay. To get here we had a combination of 4 trains, a cable car and a bus. Lauren decided to have a fainting episode on the peak hour train from Kyoto to Osaka. It was so packed she could have fainted and wouldn’t have been able to fall. We managed to strip her thick jacket off her and clear enough of a space for her to be able to sit on her suitcase. Once in Osaka we decided to feed her, which immediately fixed the problem.

We chose to stay at Tentokuen, a monastery in the centre of town. We arrived before check in time, so went for a walk to find some lunch (we knew the vegetarian dinner being provided by the monlks may or may not be to our taste) and check out the town.

Lunch was a great curry, similar to others we’ve had in Japan – a beef indian style curry with a crumbed pork schnitzel type thing. Tastes better than it sounds. We then wandered down to the Okunion, a 2km path through an ancient cemetery. 200 000 graves and memorial pagodas line the path, along with towering pine trees – some of which are 1000 years old. Again, this is an experience that can’t be described. The peacefulness and sense of calm was quite overwhelming at times. Several times, as the trees creaked in the wind and water trickled in nearby streams, it felt like we were walking through a scene from the computer game Myst.

The path ends at the mausoleum of Kobo Daishi, one of Japans most significant religious figures, who introduced Shingon Buddhism to Japan in 805AD. He obviously had quite an influence on the locals. Walking back to the monastery we found a great little coffee shop – the type that would quite at home in Kathmandu or a remote mountain village anywhere in the world.

Back at the monastery we were led to our home for the night. Wow. This was going to be good. After exploring the room we settled into an hour or two of downtime before dinner. As expected, the dinner was a mixed bag of mysteries, but the environment was something we’ll never forget.

We were considering going out to see the town by night, but it’s freezing out there, so we settled down to some reading (“The Teaching of Buddha” in the room) or some iPad, iPod and TV (yes, TV in the room in the monastery) for the less enlightened.