I left Osaka with two things slung over my shoulder: a Jansport emptied of petty excuses, and a Canon Rebel ready to photograph landscapes of natural beauty. The JR train stopped at Namba station filled with crowds. I was desperate for an available seat so I could eat my leaf-wrapped rice ball from the Japanese franchise HORAI. Somehow, I managed. I slung both bags over one shoulder, held my chicken seaweed in one hand, chopsticks in the other, and gently squeezed the Volvic water bottle between my legs. Mid-life Japanese women - hair prim and arms crossed, flower print scarves - stared from the corner, thinking I was practicing some ethnic sway and dance routine that crazy Americans invent to get attention.


It wasn’t until later, looking out the train window that I saw a lush forest covered with frayed patches of a cloud. I realized I was on my way to Koyasan: the heritage site for Shingon Esoteric Buddhism. And once I boarded the cable car that was built on a diagonal slope, painted in vibrant cherry, I looked up towards the tracks heading to the mountain where Koyasan awaited. I felt enchanted by the line dissolving between fiction and non-fiction - the fog, the opaque blue mist, the leaves like basil.


When we arrived near the precipice, a bus was waiting to take us to our designated temple lodgings. It was nearly six pm yet no one walked the streets. Dusty streetlights blurred pools of gray light over black pavement glistening with puddles. My directions read: go up the hill that is on the right side of the Karukayado-mae stop. So I did, stepping into a cobblestone pathway escorting ornate temples seeming deserted and quiet, the lights out. I couldn’t hear a single voice.


I found Jyosin Temple, where I had booked a reservation, arriving only five minutes late for dinner - not difficult to find with a map of animated monks pointing to temple directions printed in bold. I didn’t even say my name as I arrived. Three monks dressed in casual brown and blue yakatas came towards me with their arms stretched before them. In England I would’ve given my hand but here it seemed suitable to simply smile. They lead me to my room upstairs which was prepared with a pot of tea and cushions over the tatami. I dropped everything down, unsure whether to stand or plop myself, rest a bit. I was somehow anxious to relax.


One of the monks looked at me and made the universal hand sign, pinkie up thumb erected, digging into his mouth. ‘Beer?’ he asked. And I smiled because he nailed it perfect;y. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Arigato gozaimashita.’


They brought three red trays to my tatami room: tempura, goma tofu, spinach, radishes, noodles and tea - and I was delighted to have been there, amused with a glass of beer down my belly. The monks spoke to me in their broken English and mended souls. I bowed and agreed to nothing I understood but I figured things would sort out as I went along. By nine thirty lights were out in my room, and I left the window open, inviting the sound of crickets and raindrops to lull me after sleep, sublime tranquility.

…at last I felt irrevocably at peace.

Insect serenades in black pockets of the forest; the steadily humming fan in the room.

I felt absent. Disguised and unable to be found, as though mind and body had become frayed pieces looming over the mountain, becoming still. Hushed by a benevolent freedom.

At a quarter to six a soft blue exposure filled my room. Water dripped from gutters and I brushed my teeth, went downstairs to the main temple. Gold ornaments and red columns filled the decor of the shrine, and the gentle fragrance of incense was subtle. Three monks began chanting and I closed my eyes as I sat upright, listening to the Otsutome, the Buddhist prayer. There was no one preaching, no sermon - only resonance, profound voices seeming to massage the soul; like a union of light and sound.


Afterwards, breakfast in my room: miso, tofu, egg, rice, seaweed and soy. It was still drizzling outside and I wondered how beautiful the cemetery would look drenched.

Half hour before eight o’clock and I felt I should’ve stayed in my room a little longer, write a bit even if I felt I had nothing but still solitude. Something in the weather called me.Being there, I simply wanted to be outside and walk around. I knew of the mausoleums, the grave stones, waiting for me at the end of the street, leading a city of residing spirits of great ancestors, great warriors, called Sando, the entrance path.


Two raindrops fell above my eye as I stepped outside the temple reception, and my pause must’ve asked the question. As I turned back inside, the monks’ eyes opened. ‘Ah, chotto matte.’ Their hands flew up like traffic guards, starfish fingers; and their heads twitched left to right, a flashlight hitting three sleeping beetles. One monk handed me a very nice umbrella, black and big like a Mary Poppins prop. I stepped out to find the drizzle but it had ceased.

The monk bowed, and said good-bye. I felt rude to walk away, but I did so in an apologetic pace, bowing as well before turning my back. At the corner I turned and waved - he was still there, eyebrows raised in a sort of humble gratitude.

Within twenty paces, my camera was in my hand, snapping saturated red leaves hinting the autumn season. Tori gates leading towards the other temple lodges covered in an algae colored moss; the raindrops falling in single dives at the ends of various flowers and berries, sodden from the weather. Cedar trees hundreds of years old towered above me as I walked the approximate 2km path, passing more than 200,000 grave stones. Hardly anyone was awake or roaming the cemetery. I approached statues as though they were giant gods, waiting for passing visitors to come and open books of history, and remember. I looked out and saw red bibs tied around the necks of buddha statues - to keep them cared for as the Buddhists of Shingon Esoteric faith believe some souls are still young as children, and need caring.


Moss and fabric, it could’ve been a reminder of a Christmas arrangement, wreaths and stockings of another culture. I walked through it for two hours, content with bliss.


A big pagoda stood at the end of the cemetery called Torodo, the lantern temple in which a flame has burned uninterrupted for a thousand years. Red and tiered with a Buddha model sitting inside. After tracing it’s edge with my footsteps, I walked out of the cemetery with a different path than I had gone in.

As midday arrived more buses brought in groups of elderly visitors, following tour guides through the cemetery. I was in the mood for coffee, and treated myself to one at a cafe near the temple I had slept at. There was no one in the cafe. A subservient waitress handed me two leather bound books of photographs taken in Koyasan: the multi-colored carnival of autumn, the snow covered gravestones in winter, sakura scattered on the streets in spring. I sipped and admired them.


I walked along Odawara Street, through the center of entire Koyasan, photographing vendors selling oranges off the side of the street; bought incense at a souvenir shop, all the while feeling like an invisible visitor secretly reviewing the atmosphere - a quiet drizzly afternoon.

A Japanese young couple visiting Koyasan like myself boarded the bus that was headed back to the cable car station, laughing at each other’s expressions and good looks in the light of fresh love. The bus swerved through the thin streets, around the ridges of the mountain as the radio played ‘Dedicated to the one I love’ by the Mamas and the Papas - hippie age advocating universal peace. I rested my forehead against the glass.

It struck me as an idea that could be held inside the palm of my hand. Nothing here, nothing there, but an intrinsic place, a serene retreat from bustling lifestyle. One single idea, one single breath that embraces everything. I wondered for how long I could feel its shape in my hand as we descended off the mountain, waving good-bye in my mind’s eye. I wondered for how long I’d be able to hear the monks’ chanting vibrations; if I could take it with me, since locations are mere dots on a map. Not a place atop a mountain, or a place away from it, but a single peace, knowing that everything exists as a single secret. A single serenity - a humanist tremor, unflinching.

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