Overnight at Muryoko-in (Buddhist Temple): The Full Experience

Three trains, a subway, a cable car, a bus, and two and a half hours away from Kyoto sits Koyasan. The site was founded by Kobo Daishi, who was an important scholar, historical and religious figure famous for developing the Japanese alphabet, calligraphy, and the monasterial beginnings of Koyasan. His religious stature is similar to that of a Saint in Catholicism. The area is considered quite sacred. Just as the Great Buddha sits in the center of a lotus flower with a guard on each of the eight petals surrounding him, Koya-san is a high-elevation plateau surrounded by eight mountains. The whole town is a World Heritage Site.

The temple where I stayed was called Muryoko-in. It housed about a dozen Buddhist monks.

There were maybe fifteen guest rooms, each 11 tatami mats big. (Tatami mats are about 6’ x 3’, and tile the floor.) Each room had a kotatsu, which is kind of like a cocktail table with a heater underneath. The heat is kept in by placing heavy blankets under the tabletop. There was also a small shrine area in every room, as well as a mirror and small set of drawers, a rack for hanging clothes, and pillows for sitting. All the “walls” were literally paper-thin. They were visually private, but let’s just say that I wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep without my earplugs!

When I first arrived, the monks showed me the toilets, washrooms, and my room. If you ever have to walk through a Japanese guesthouse, there are some very important shoe rules you must master. (Imagine trying to learn these with backpacks strapped to your back and chest.) At the entryway to the building, you must take off your street shoes and step up to the wooden platform. Street shoes are kept in a bookshelf-like rack outside the building. You are given slippers to wear through the hallways of the building. Once you get to your room, you must remove your slippers and then step onto the tatami mats inside, but please keep your socks on. And don’t forget: The shoes must be facing away from the door – i.e., you can slip into them coming out. I’m not really sure why it is this way, but so it goes. If you have to go to the toilet, you must step backwards out of your hallway shoes and slip into a separate pair of bathroom slippers. At Muryoko-in, the hallway slippers were red and the toilet slippers were green to avoid any confusion. Once you get to the washroom, you must remove shoes and socks.

After a few minutes of getting settled, the monks brought me some hot tea and cookies – which were delicious! I took a stroll through the building and the garden afterward. Gardens can be considered as important as the building itself for some temples. Dinner was served in my room at 6 o’clock. It took me over an hour to eat it, and – honestly – I was eating as fast as I could!

After dinner was bath time. As you enter the washroom (same gender only!), there is a changing area where you take off your slippers, socks, and everything else. The washroom was through another set of sliding doors. On one side were stools, buckets, faucets and showerheads, where you actually “washed”. On the other side was a steamy hot bath. It’s really important to wash – and rinse – really well before getting into the bath. The water is shared by everyone and is only changed once a day.


After the bath, you can slip into the robe and “housecoat” provided and get ready for bed. While I was washing up, the monks removed all of my dinner dishes and laid out a futon mattress for bedding. It wasn’t more than 3” thick, but it had some nice, warm blankets and a dense pillow that felt like a beanbag. Noisy neighbors aside, I slept like a baby!


The morning service was from 6 am to 7:30 am. I didn’t feel comfortable taking pictures during the service, but you can listen to a chant from the day before by watching the video of the guestbook. The service area was three chambers lit by only a few candles. The monks sat up near the shrine area, and the rest of us sat back. The shrine area was a wooden platform that was as big as the three chambers. There were altars, red tapestries with gold embroidery, statues with bronze and gold, a fire pit for burning incense, and many other things. Overall, the room was dark, so the candles and the reflections off the gold and bronze were the only light sources. Even though I knew where the back of the chambers were, they looked like they went on forever, like looking into a cave.


The chanting was amazing , and reminded me of an orchestra of stringed instruments. They weren’t talking or singing – it wasn’t necessarily harmonious – but it was more moving than the prayers spoken aloud at many Christian services. The chants went on throughout the service, led by one or two monks who were joined by the other monks and some bowls or cymbals for a ringing or clanging tone. The temperature of the room rose as the service progressed and the incense-burning firepit took effect. The air became smoky and fragrant. Needless to say, it was a whole-body experience. We were able to participate in the ritual offering of tea. To do so, we walked up the left chamber by the incense, offered the tea, walked through the back of the second chamber where all the monks were chanting, offered tea leaves (I think) in the right chamber, and returned to our seats. I don’t feel any more Buddhist than I did yesterday, but it was a very moving experience in any case.

Breakfast was served in my room at 8 am, and by 9 am, I was out on the town. I saw a few of the important sights in Koyasan and then geared back up to begin my five-hour trek to Hiroshima. One of the monks was even kind enough to drive me to the cable car station in his car!