[porkwah]

I'm in the Kansai region for a few days. Anyone been here?

[nightscotsman]

I can recommend a night on Mt Koya (also known as Koya-san). It's a sacred Budist mountain not too far from Osaka with lots of temples and an amazing cemetery. The great part is the only places to stay are in the temples themselves - there are no hotels. I stayed in a 200 year old temple with golden walls, a beautiful garden outside my sliding paper doors, and two lavish vegetarian meals in antique laquerware served in my room. All for about $100.

[porkwah]

Osaka and Kyoto are excellent food towns, very different from Tokyo. In the past day here I've been eating at the "low end" of the spectrum -- takoyaki, noodles grilled at street vendors, tofu shops, etc. but the higher end is probably solid as well.

I get the feeling with Japan that I need this trip to be about two orders of magnitude longer to really get to try everything sufficiently. And that's just food. Most of the time I grok things better here when I assume I'm on another planet, not just another country.

[porkwah]

nightscotsman, on May 18 2006, 01:17 PM, said:

I can recommend a night on Mt Koya (also known as Koya-san). It's a sacred Budist mountain not too far from Osaka with lots of temples and an amazing cemetery. The great part is the only places to stay are in the temples themselves - there are no hotels. I stayed in a 200 year old temple with golden walls, a beautiful garden outside my sliding paper doors, and two lavish vegetarian meals in antique laquerware served in my room. All for about $100.

That would be lovely -- but I would need to have prepared this in advance, it turns out.

It's raining and raining and raining here, and a place to stay like that would have been beautiful.

I did catch the Mets-Yankees game though. Much better without ads.