Koyasan and a quiet retreat to Japan's holiest mountains

Hello all,

I ventured 50km south of Osaka to visit a town called Koya-san, which is famous as a village town of temples which are still active and have a thriving monastic population. It's in a beautiful setting, 800m above sea level with more than 100 monastaries around a head temple. The village and monks are surrounded by two concentric mountain chains of 8 peaks each, and are said to resemble an 8-petalled lotus blossum...very pituresque. It's a surreal place, very quiet and peaceful. There is a cemetary there called Okunoin which is the most incredible setting for a cemetary I have ever seen!! It was stunning, situated in a forest, tall Japaese spruce, maple trees and lots of hungry, thirsty mosquito's which took a liking to me so I am covered in bites...nice. I was not very happy about it
However, there was nice wildlife knocking aboot but there were hard to get good photos but here's one I got of a dragonfly that was flying around one of the ponds in one of the monastaries. We walked around for the day, just chilling out and getting some fresh air and an escape from the madness of Osaka. Recommended to anyone who visits Japan. I'll post a page on the photopage when I sort through the 200 photos I took!! May take me all week so check it towards the weekend. There are some amazing buildings and colours there...



Well the storm never hit Osaka thankfully but it hit the up the coast a bit but I don't think it did much damage. I see that a mega hurricaine is hitting Louisiana, the price of a barrel of oil is $70(!) and Cobh is a litter blackspot!! I'm listening to a recording of today's Morning Ireland. Madness. If they put bins out it might help and if people were a bit more responsible I guess, then there wouldn't be illegal dumping everywhere.

Not much else happening here. Pariah is a jammy langer who shouldn't be allowed to sit on headlands when there is no body else there...he's not sharing the stuff he's seeing!! Fair play Owen, nice one fella. Not much bird news (I can hear you all cry out in anguish and disappointment, I am sorry!!) but I did see a Jay in Koya-san...which was nice.

Ok then, I'm off to bed to read Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

bye for now

ps: This week I have mostly been eating pomegranates