Wakayama: DAY 2 (Sunday, July 31st, 2016) – World Heritage Tour

The activity on Sunday, July 31^st, 2016 was a tour to the magnificent Koyasan, the sacred site of Buddhism registered as the UNESCO World Heritage. The number of participants was around 90 in total and they were students and teachers from Overseas, Other Prefectures and Wakayama Prefecture.

During this tour, I made a lot of friends with students from different prefectures and high schools that were mostly in the “Disaster Prevention” and “IT and Communication” Research Category Group. Some students of Seirin High School from Wakayama Prefecture guided the tour and they gave explanations of each attractions that we visited.

 Koyakun, the mascot of Koyasan and student from Seirin High School who led the tour

 The journey from the hotel to Koyasan took around 2 hours by bus. The attractions that we visited were Rokkaku Kyozo (Hexagonal Sutra Repository), Kondo Hal, Sanko no Matsu (Trident Pine), Miedo (Great Potrait Hall), Konpon Daito Pagoda, Kongobuji Temple where there were rock garden and room of calligraphies, and Reihokan Museum.

Participants from "Disaster Prevention" and "IT and Communication"

:)

In the afternoon, we had the chance of enjoying Koyasan’s unique traditional dishes such as “Shojin Ryori” (Vegetarian Buddhist Cuisine) and Goma-dofu (Sesame Tofu) for lunch. Before we started to eat, we said “Itadakimasu” to show our appreciation to the person who cooked the meal and served the food.

Shojin Ryori (Vegetarian Buddhist Cuisine)

Goma-dofu (sesame tofu)

The first floor of the restaurant where we ate the cuisines sold a variety of authentic souvenirs. There were key chains, magnets, stickers, notebooks that have the feature of Koya-kun which is the Koyasan’s mascot. Then, there were also many sweets such as cookies and chocolates that contain Mikan oranges as the main ingredients.

Great lunch!

After lunch, we continued our travel to Ekoin Temple. In there, we experienced Ajikan Meditation that was guided by a Buddhist monk.

The tour was ended with a walk in Okunoin, the site of the mausoleum of Kobo Daishi who was the founder of Shingon Buddhism.

We arrived in the hotel in the evening. We gathered according to the research category in the hotel’s lobby and started to have a preparation for the next day’s Sectional Meeting. We were prepared to confidently express our ideas and opinions as we hoped that we could result a fruitful discussions in the following days.