Day-trip to Koyasan

Mount Kōya (高野山, Kōya-san) is a large temple settlement in Wakayama Prefecture, south of Osaka. The Shingon sekt of Buddhism is headquartered here. Overnighting is expensive and complicated (overnighting would invonve being located in a shrine with pilgrims, participating in their ceremonies, etc. and spending $500 per night) so we opted for a day trip which is totally doable from Osaka. We took the metro to Tengachaya, and bought the Koyasan world heritage ticket, which covered all transportation and some local discounts. The train takes us to Gokurabashi station, from there a cable-car and then another bus.

The mountain range is 800 meters above sea level and has a very unique vegetation 200-600 year-old pine trees with incredibly big and high trunks. We explored the Kongobu-ji complex of temples including Danjo Garan:

had lunch in a fantastic restaurant:

and meandered in the Okunion Cemetery, where besides gravestones we found also monuments of different companies commemorating employees who died during their work. Weird concept.