Travelling at breakneck speed: part 2

Monday October 23rd.
Ghastly early morning people Dad and Ishbel make me get up at sparrowfart, and we yawn onto trains and wind our way to Koya-San. I suddenly understand why everyone in Japan lives on the flat land around the coast; the hills are covered with shadowy bamboo jungle. It's enough to make anyone put down his machete and say, "we're moving to the coast. I don't care if we have to live in a shoebox."
The sun waves through the windows all morning, but as we get closer to Koya-San the sky clouds over and it feels chilly. From the train onto a local switchback, then onto a funicular, then finally a bus to twist the last few kilometers into the town. It's a huge relief to be able to walk about and get some space. The streets are filled with temples and shrines. This has a major centre of Japanese Buddhism for over a thousand years.
We check into our lodgings at Shojoshin-in, a working temple complete with monks and early morning prayers and vegetarian food. The rooms overlook a small garden wedged between the back wall of the temple and the cliff-edge of the hill behind it. Carp swim in the pond. The maple leaves are starting to turn. It's so peaceful it makes me nervous.
We walk around town and check out a few temples. I had been suffering from temple fatigue but it's always nice to go to one with someone who's never seen one before. Incense; huge buddha statues; the statues of the bodisatvas carrying flaming swords and scourges with which to convert the unbelieving (and you thought this was a peaceful religion); gold gold gold and shiny black lacquer; money clinking in offering boxes. Toto, we're not in the Church of Scotland any more.
Dinner is a traditional style Japanese meal in a huge tatami room, served on short-legged lacquered tables. A huge amount of food presented in dainty dishes. Mostly delicious apart from the weird spongey-thing in soup that inexplicably reminds me and Dad of Granny Mary's cake.
A creepy walk through a huge, misty graveyard in the dark spooks me silly, and it takes a long soak in the bath (big, wooden and shared, of course. This is Japan.) to get the chill out of me.
I am not suited to getting up early. We watch the monks perform a ceremony for ancestors at 6.30 and I try not to yawn. It is interesting to watch, but just too early. Breakfast comes in an absurd amount of dishes again. I feel for the poor soul who has to do the washing up.