Staying in a temple宿坊
Book one night at a temple and go to the morning service.
Book one night at a temple and go to the morning service.
Shukubo is temple lodging, and it is not a hotel with a religious theme. You sleep on bedding on a straw-matted floor in a temple room, eat vegetarian food cooked by the people who live there, and if you wish you attend the morning service — which is at about six.
It is a night unlike a hotel, and it is not uncomfortable: rooms are warm, there are baths, and the food is often the best vegetarian meal you will have in Japan. What it is not is a place to arrive late and drink. Gates close early and mornings start early.
Koyasan in Wakayama is where to do it — a Buddhist town at 800 metres with more than a hundred temples, around fifty of which take guests. Book well ahead; the good ones fill months in advance, especially in the autumn colour weeks.
15:00–17:00 arrive — earlier than a hotel, and they mean it · 17:30 bath · 18:00 dinner, vegetarian, many small dishes, in your room or a hall · 21:00 quiet · 06:00 the morning service, optional but the reason to be there · 07:30 breakfast · 09:00 out.
At Koyasan, walk Okunoin — the cemetery of two hundred thousand graves under thousand-year cedars — at dusk, when the lanterns are lit. That, and the morning service, is the trip.