Monday was a travel day to the ryokan in Koyasan. Before leaving Tokyo, the group shipped luggage straight to the Kyoto hotel so nobody had to drag it through Koyasan and back. Excellent decision.
Getting to Koyasan took four trains, a cable car, and a bus. The first stretch was a little stressful, but everyone made it without a real problem.
Leaving Tokyo also included Sarah filming in the train station, which a local did not appreciate. There was yelling, a phone smack, and a quick reminder that not all travel footage gets community support.
The bullet train out of Tokyo came with gyozas and bentos, which Sarah later had on her highlight list. Correct instinct. High-speed rail should have snacks.
At one point, Zach, Caitlin, Sarah, and Ashley did not realize the train had ended and everyone needed to get off and transfer. They sat there while the rest of the train emptied, then realized what was happening and had to jump off and run to the next train before it left.
Snacks appeared along the way: rice balls, dumplings, and Tokyo Banana, a soft sponge cake filled with banana custard cream.
Tokyo Banana later became legally relevant to the trip when Zach held a box of it in a photo while everyone else held bento boxes.
Koyasan was amazing, tucked into nature, with connected rooms at the ryokan. The staff offered 2-2, 3-1, or 4-0 room splits. Sarah kept joking that everyone should go 4-0, but the group split 2-2 like reasonable people.
The cemetery tour required pants. Ashley was the only one who had pants, so the afternoon turned into a long shop search and an eventual purchase of wildly overpriced pants.
Back at the ryokan, everyone did a 30-minute meditation session: about 15 minutes of explanation and 15 minutes of practice. Very cool.
Dinner was memorable. Most of the food had been turned into gelatinous shapes, which led to Sarah's theory that someone received a Jell-O maker as a wedding gift and decided to use it for the entire meal. Different, but Zach loved it.
The Okunoin Cemetery tour with Nori was incredible: huge, atmospheric, and full of graves and monuments.
The tour also created a lasting inside joke. Nori explained that when someone is buried there, the throat bone goes in the small box and the other bones and ashes go in the big box. He kept getting more dramatic every time he said throat bone, small box, and big box.
