Quote:
Originally Posted by atan64
Thanks samurai007 for your input, I appreciate it! The Namba Station looks to be a good starting point for wandering thru the streets of Ame-Mura, Den Den town etc. Okay, I'm also a fan of Tonkatsu dishes as well...thanks for the recommendation on that as well.
With respect to my itinerary, I will get in temples and traditional sites in Kyoto and Nara. I'll be seeing Hiroshima for the day as well as a visit to Miyajima Island.
You mentioned Koya-san, I never heard of this place. It looks interesting when I looked it up on google. Is it worth checking out? It looks pretty close to Nara. I think Nara would be a solid day trip from Kyoto, however If I could fit in Koyo san I would.
Cheers.
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Koya-san is one of my favorite places in all of Japan. The cemetery is incredible, there's tons of temples, and you can stay overnight in a temple to experience temple life (eating the vegetarian cuisine the monks eat, etc) For this reason, if you are able to spend the night there to experience a temple stay, that's best. But even as a day trip it's nice.
You can get to it from either Nara or Osaka's Namba station. From Namba, take the Nankai-Koya line directly to Koya-san (which is the last stop on the train line, and the ticket price includes the tram ride to the top of the mountain.) From Nara, take the train line that heads for Wakayama and change trains in Hashimoto City, getting on the Nankai Koya line there. It's faster and easier to head out from Namba, but the scenery of the train ride is nicer from Nara. Note that the Nankai-Koya line is
not a JR train, so you can't use your rail pass on it if you have one. However, the train from Nara to Hashimoto is a JR train, which will get you halfway there.
Here's some pictures I took of of Koyasan:
The bottom pictures are the temple I stayed at and a monk serving us dinner.