Kansai, Japan · Mountain, Town / small city
A monastery town on a mountain, the headquarters of Shingon Buddhism since the year 819, with the vast Okunoin cemetery among centuries-old cedars and the chance to stay overnight in a temple (shukubo) with morning prayers and vegetarian Buddhist food.
Train + bus — Private Nankai Koya Line from Osaka-Namba to Gokurakubashi (regular train ~1h30, ¥930; the faster Koya limited express costs more), then a cable car (5 min, ¥500) and a short bus into town. Not covered by the National JR Pass or the Kansai WIDE Pass, since it's a private line (Nankai).
🧭 Pilgrimage🧘 Wellness & unplugging
Stay at one of more than 50 temples offering lodging: vegetarian Buddhist food (shojin ryori), a possible fire ritual (goma), and morning prayers before breakfast.
Japan's largest cemetery, with more than 200,000 tombs and monuments among centuries-old cedars, leading to founder Kobo Daishi's mausoleum.
After the seven o'clock service the monks burn wooden tablets amid mantras before Fudo Myo-o; anyone staying in a shukubo can attend without booking.
A lantern walk among two hundred thousand graves and centuries-old cedars, narrated by a monk; the cemetery never closes and after dark it is another place entirely.
Kukai's foundational temple complex, with its eye-catching two-story vermilion pagoda as Koyasan's symbolic centre.
Vegetarian temple cooking served on lacquer trays, with the sesame tofu that is the speciality of the mountain; no meat, fish, garlic or onion.
Ten thousand lamps burning before the mausoleum of Kukai, two of them alight without interruption for more than 900 years.
Esoteric shingon meditation on the syllable 'A', guided at dusk in several temples, lasting around forty minutes.
Twenty-three kilometres on foot from the valley to the Daimon gate, marked by 180 stone waymarks from the 13th century; it is a World Heritage site and it is how people came up before the funicular.
You copy the sutra with a brush in your own temple room and can then leave it as an offering at Okunoin.
The administrative headquarters of Shingon Buddhism, with the Banryutei rock garden, Japan's largest Zen rock garden.
The only survivor of the seven halls where women prayed, excluded from the sacred precinct until 1872; from it starts the ridge trail that circles the whole mountain.
On 13 August, some 100,000 candles lit by the visitors themselves illuminate the two kilometres of the cemetery path.
It gathers thousands of pieces from the mountain's temples, with dozens of National Treasures rotating through the display.
The only temple lodging on the mountain with natural hot-spring water, and with a garden designed by the landscape architect Shigemori Mirei.
On 15 June, a procession with floats and children dressed as monks for the birth of the founder of the shingon school.
The great traditional entrance gate to the sacred precinct, with open views toward the surrounding mountains.
At the foot of the mountain, where Kukai's mother lived because women were not allowed to go up; today it is covered in breast-shaped votive offerings left by women.
The chapel of the legend of the father and son who lived here without being able to acknowledge each other, and the two lacquered mausoleums of Ieyasu and Hidetada, from 1643.
In May and October a rite in which a flower is thrown onto a mandala while blindfolded is opened to any visitor, Buddhist or not.
It holds the tahoto pagoda of 1223, the oldest building in Koyasan and a National Treasure, among century-old rhododendrons.
A train with windows facing the valley and, at the end, a funicular that climbs a gradient of almost thirty degrees up to the sacred mountain.
Juzu rosaries assembled to order, incense from the mountain and the freeze-dried tofu that, according to tradition, was invented here by accident after being left out in the snow.
A family workshop where you can watch the sesame being ground and taste freshly made goma-dofu, very different from the one that reaches the temple tray.
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