Day 17: Special rituals in a temple

Saturday March 12th, 2011 by Rick van Kemenade

Today the participants woke up in Kyoto for the last time. The morning program was free. Many spent the morning at the imperial palace, where they had applied earlier during the week to be able to visit. The fact that the palace was across the street from the hotel made this a very convenient excursion. Others decided to wake up late to recover from the tiring days that preceded this one.

Early in the afternoon the entire party gathered at Kyoto’s central station. From here, we took the JR train to Osaka, from where we travelled on to Shigisan, a small town in the Nara prefecture. The large luggage had been sent ahead to Osaka, since it would only cause inconvenience at the temple. There was a plan to walk up the hill that housed the temple. Unfortunately it started raining when we arrived at the station and we were slightly behind on schedule, so the group boarded a bus instead.

The full bus clearly had a rough time tugging 32 Europeans up a mountain. We finally made it to the right bus stop and entered the Senju-in Temple complex. We were welcomed by the monks who reside there. The men and women were taken to separate sleeping halls and the rules and (early) timetable were explained. After that we enjoyed a very special diner on our knees, with new and interesting flavours for all.

After diner, there was time to walk around the temple area. Some decided to walk all the way up the hill, while others watched the devastating earthquake news (fortunately far away from our area) on a small television screen. Later on, there was time to enjoy the hot tub and lights went out at 22:00, to rise very, very early the next morning.