Extraordinary experiences in a “syukubo”

My wife and I planned overnight stay at a syukubo, a pilgrim’s lodging at a temple, before visiting Koya-San. Our intention was simple, we had a fascination with the activities of recent foreign travelers in deep Japan, some of them have stayed in syukubos. There are more than fifty syukubos in Koya-San. For many current Japanese people, of course for us too, syukubos are far from their useful convenient hotels. If we stay at a syukubo at any rate, an extraordinary essence is desirable for our experience. At last we decided to stay at the syukubo of part of the world heritage site of Koya-San, Kongo Sanmai-in.

Koya-san( 1 )

At the syukubo

Kongo Sanmai-in is on the outskirt of the town. Once we arrived at the gate of Kongo Sanmai-in at 4 o’clock, many worshipers who didn’t seem to be guests had been taking photos there. We didn’t know the place to stay and we were afraid of making a mistake of the place, then we asked a guide man in the small reception room where we should go. He said; “Enter”, and we went forward to the entrance of Kongo Sanmai-in which was the formal entrance. After that we had some unusual experiences different from that of a hotel in Japan till getting in the booked room, but thinking of it as a religious experience in syukubo those were trivial and in the category of the extraordinary experience, moreover the young priests who welcomed us did their best.

At dinner

During this stay an important experience was vegetation cooking, “syojin-ryori”. The discipline of Buddhism prohibits eating any meat. I ate it for the first time in ages, for probably over forty years.

The dinner started at 5:30 p.m. All of the guests, approximately forty people, took dinner in a large tatami room. They sat down on “zabuton”, flat floor cushions, in front of “gozens”, small private tables. The room was so large that each of them ate very quietly, but I couldn’t conclude the reason for the silence only to the largeness of the dining room. The discipline of Buddhism orders people to keep silent during meal time, and vegetation cooking also doesn’t lift the appetite.

I ordered a bottle of beer. While sipping glasses of beer, I ate the vegetation cooking. I usually like mild tasting dishes, but for me, probably for many people, the cooking taste was too mild. The more salt added to this cooking, the more joyful the dinner made us, I thought with sipping glasses of beer. However almost all the people quietly ate the mild vegetation cooking with no alcohol. Of course they, not me, were right.

Two foreigners, a young adult tall man and a woman on my right, were taking the dinner. He sat on the zabuton folding his long legs and ate the mild vegetation cooking with his chopsticks. He helped his partner by his guidance in a very small voice how to eat the vegetation cooking. The language he spoke wasn’t English but he seemed to be intelligent and to have a lot of knowledge about Japanese culture. I called out in English to him where they came from. They were Italian and came from the Veneto region with popular Venice where we visited three years ago. After a little communication with him, my wife and I (his partner, who was a beautiful woman, seemed not to speak English nor Japanese and kept silent), they kept silent again in order to concentrate on eating. They didn’t seem to be typical Italians who I met on our trip to Italy. I assumed in my mind he invited her to come to this syukubo. Though they couldn’t eat all of the cooking, I thought their trying to eat the vegetation cooking with its mild taste was good enough.

After the dinner

It was 6:30p.m after the dinner. My wife and I went out in the fresh summer evening and walked around the town in a soft breeze on the mountainous hill of Koya-san.

Almost all shops had closed their shatters and the number of walking people had decreased. Voices of people became silent and the sound which I often heard seemed to be the singing of insect to me. The atmosphere gained a more saintly aspect.

In the town, the people we saw were almost all foreign travelers. We also saw the two Italian travelers along the way we were walking, the Italian woman greeted us with her eyes and sent a signal by drawing her partner’s sleeve. Her behavior was very Japanese. After this meeting I wondered if her behavior was from her characteristics or by the influence of the atmosphere of Koya-San.

Buddhist religious service in the early morning

The next morning it began at six o’clock. All of the priests of Kongo Sannai-in and probably all visitors gathered. It was planned as the supreme experience of the stay at the syukubo. Initially, a priest, who might be a middle-class leader of priests, voiced short sentences of a sutra or a mantra, and all of other priests also voiced together following after the leader’s voice. Simultaneous complex sounds by a couple of religious percussion instruments rang among the voices. And this action with the complex voices and the rhythmical sound of the percussion continued with changing words, often strongly or often weakly, often slightly longer or often slightly shorter naturally for approximately twenty minutes, and this brought our minds to a religious field or to our inside.

Secondly, each guest prayed in turn in front of the Buddhist statue. Of course the young Italian gentle man and lady prayed, especially the lady prayed with her hands close together　( in the form of “gassyo”). I also wondered which person was the first proposer of visiting Koya-San, the intelligent Italian gentle man or the shy but polite young Italian lady. Moreover I wondered whether her own religious characteristics lured her behavior or the atmosphere did. I recalled my first impression from her silence at the dinner and replaced it with my new impression that she might have been alert to all opportunities of experience in Koya-san.

Thirdly, the executive priest in Kongo Sannai-in expressed thanks for our staying and a hope about each our happiness gave a short speech, in addition, he talked about the many troublesome operations in response to the many detailed orders of the Japanese government office of culture and the expense of the repair of the historical heritage for the sake of maintaining this temple as a world heritage site.

Finally, we enjoyed the temple of the world heritage site while thinking of the talk by the executive priest.

Totally, this stay at the syukubo brought us many experiences including the short encounter with the good Italian couple, the experience of staying at the temple of the world heritage site and, of course, the religious experience.

The never ending practicing place, Oku-no-in -Koya-san ( 3 )