- Subject to Change -
Day 1: Fly from Hong Kong to Kansai International Airport (Osaka),
transfer to Nara and stay in a small friendly minshuku. Guide will
accompany or meet you at Kansai Airport.
Day 2: Walk thorugh Nara Park and its environs to view the treasures
of this old capital. The stories to be told begin at Sarusawa pond, on through
Todaiji temple, the world's largest wooden
building, and then to Yaksuhiji temple with the oldest carving of the Buddha's
footprints in Japan. Bus to Yama-no-be-no-Michi. Stay in pilgrimage temple.
Day 3: Walk 15km along the Yama-no-be-no-Michi, Japan's oldest recognized
road. Walk through small moated ancient villages, past Japan's oldest shrines,
Isonokami Shrine and Omiwa Shrine. Stay
in a ryokan dating from about 200 years ago.
Day 4: Train to Haibara. Walk 13km along the Ise Kaido and the Muro
Mountain Kodo, to Muro temple, known for its ability
to bring rain, and which allowed women to worship, though they were refused
elsewhere. On to Onodera temple opposite a river with Japan's largest cliff
carving of the Buddha done in the 12th century. Stay in minshuku.
 Day 5: Bus to Tanzan
Shrine. Walk 4 km to Ishi Butai,
the monolithic tomb of Soga no Umako. Lunch in a small restaurant. Another
3km walk to a pilgrimage temple of the 33 Kannon Bodhisattva route, a fertility
shrine, and Amakashi-no-Oka hill to lookout over the Yamato plain strewn
with tumuli, palace ruins, and sacred shrines and temples but dimly remembered.
A further 3 km walk to stay at a minshuku.
Day 6: Visit the Takamatsu tumulus to see the wall paintings of
the ancient Korean artisan immigrants to the nascent Yamato kingdom. Walk
4km through towering ancient imperial mausolea, across Kamihirata pass down
to Inabuchi on the Asuka river. Walk 4km down this river valley to Tachibana Temple, searching out the curiously
carved ancient stones. Train to Gojo. Stay the night in a small ryokan on
a street where all the houses have kept their façades since Edo times.
Day 7: Trains to the Mt. Koya foothills. Walk 10km along the old
Koya Kaido following the route travelled by pilgrims in the footsteps of
Kukai, Japan's most famous Buddhist priest. Train up to begin walking on
the "Women's Path", that circumspectly skirts mt. Koya, made when
women were not allowed into the heart of Koya. Stay in Buddhist temple.
Day 8: Walk 3km through Oku-no-in,
with pilgrims clad in white, to where Kukai has sat in meditation for more
than 1,000 years. Express trains whisk us back to bustling Osaka. Go out
for dinner; stay in hotel.
Day 9: Free time for shopping, or a visit to Osaka
Castle. Express bus to airport, afternoon flight to Hong Kong. |
