Once again we set out to catch the ferry to Miyajimaguchi and then the train to Hiroshima. After a pastry in our favourite pastry shop, we negotiated the ticketing system to catch the Shinkansen back to Kyoto. It was two minutes late getting there! We noticed, because we only had 20 minutes to catch our connecting train. We called on our experience of commuting to London and powered through the crowds to reach platform 0 in record time.
We were catching the Thunderbird service to Fukui. While nowhere near as fast as the Shinkansen, it is the fastest regular non-Shinkansen service. The front and back look quite threatening!
It was scheduled to get to Fukui at 2pm, and we then had to take a taxi to reach our hotel by 3pm. Once again, Japan Railways let us down. It arrived 15 minutes late due to a level crossing problem. We managed to find a cab and get him to understand where we wanted to go – namely Eiheiji, a Zen Buddhist temple in the hills above Fukui. He drove through three stop lights to get us there!
We checked in and went through all the formalities – dinner time, breakfast time, communal bath times – and then had to dash up to our room, dump our stuff and get back down to reception. There were about thirty other guests there, about 75% Japanese, and we were all off to do a Zazen meditation “experience” at the temple itself.
They issued us all with lanyards and umbrellas and off we went walking alongside a stream to get to the Eiheiji temple itself. Once there, we all had to put our umbrellas in a rack, go inside, remove our shoes and put on indoor sandals. We were then lined up in twos and marched off to the meditation room by a very scary monk!
I’d love to say it was an enlightening experience, but the reality is that the scary monk spoke mainly Japanese with the odd sentence in English, so I didn’t have a clue what was going on! I believe I might have dropped off a couple of times.
But if the meditation disappointed, the hotel, when we finally got to see it, and the restaurant more than made up for it.
Our room is lovely and dinner was superb. We had a choice of traditional Japanese or a Buddhist meal and we selected the latter. From the appetisers to the desert, everything was top quality and perfectly prepared and presented.
I’m looking forward to breakfast!
Steve and Diane on Tour 