I don’t normally bother posting bad meals at restaurants, since there are usually so many good meals that deserve the attention. Henjoko-in, of course, is not a restaurant, but a buddhist temple on Koya-san. It deserves a write up for the absolutely terrible experience we had at the temple, not just on this trip to Japan, but probably in all of my years of traveling anywhere in the world. Before you criticize me for criticizing a Buddhist temple as if its a bad meal at a restaurant, just read till the end and make your judgement then.
Before the trip, I debated back and forth whether to make the trip to Koya-san. Guidebooks were all gushing about how spiritual Koya-san with many Buddhist temples lining the main street on Koya-san, and how special it is to stay overnight at one of them, and eat Buddhist vegetarian meals. The reason I debated about this at the time was 1) the sheer effort needed just to get there, 2) I regularly eat great Buddhist vegetarian food at a Buddhist temple near home 3) the cost of staying at one of these temples, which was multiples more expensive than any other night’s stay in Japan, 4) that we would have seen tons of Buddhist temples by that stage of the trip, and 5) I am reasonably familiar with Buddhism. Now one may say, the cost is apples to oranges, since hotels don’t include dinner and often times, breakfast in its price. That’s correct, of course.
When we arrived at the temple, we checked in with the old monk next to the front door.
First, the dinner and the breakfast. They were easily the two worst meals of our entire trip. But the food was actually the least of their problems. We were sat in a large room with other guests.
Each of us had a little table with the spread in front of us when we arrived.
Everyone ate quietly and respectfully. One of the monks, the nicest one out of the four in the temple, was responsible for putting the meal together. The food was, very low quality. Salty soup, one-dimensional pickle, soggy tempura. Felt like they bought mass produced food, and set them into plastic containers and served.
Same for breakfast:
So I just ended up eating a bunch of rice to fill myself up.
Onto the rest of the temple stay. The evening was uneventful. We just slept early because we wanted to wake up to observe the morning service. The service room was very intricately adorned. The monks went about doing their prayers and then the head monk showed us around the prayer room. They also described presumably the cost of upkeep for such a elaborate room, and the temple in general. They gave out envelopes for everyone to make optional donations.
After breakfast, we packed up and checked out. We asked to leave our bags there because we wanted to check out the Okunoin cemetery and other Koya-san temples during the day since we arrived late in the afternoon the day before. The old monk pointed to the hallway next to his room and told us to leave the bags there. As we left, we handed over our donations and expressed our thanks. We went to put on our shoes, and saw he opened our envelopes with a look of displeasure. While our donations were not big, it was still a pretty sizable chunk of cash that none of us had the obligation to hand over. We tried not to get bothered with it, left the temple and went on with our day.
When we came back mid-afternoon to pick up our bags, we asked the old monk if we could use the restroom further down the hallway, which had seating toilets. He was saying something with an agitated tone and kept saying no, that we could not go to that section, and pointed us to the rudimentary squatting bathroom right next to us, and kept mumbling something and seemed quite upset. We ended up just didn’t bother and decided to just find bathrooms at the train station.
Now, the part that bothered all of us the most, not just me, but also the kids who could see all of this themselves, was the sheer hypocrisy of the monks, who were supposed to be religious and not as concerned about material possessions. We were conscientious tourists. All throughout Japan, we were treated with friendliness, care and hospitality. Everyone took pride in their work, whether its running a restaurant, or a hotel, or a shop, and strived to do the best possible. These were all people living in a supposedly capitalistic society. Contrast that with the very rude treatment from the monks, who gave us negative attitude for an optional donation that could easily buy us a very nice meal, on top of the 50000 yen or USD $350 / night temple stay, with a very favorable exchange rate to tourists from the US. I felt that the monks, isolated in Koya-san when they see only tourists, completely forgot how tough it was to actually make money elsewhere in Japan.
I do understand maintaining an ancient temple costs an arm and a leg, but felt there was a certain level of entitlement in the attitude from the monks at Henjoko-in, where they viewed the tourists as cash cows. Perhaps another temple in Koya-san would be better. But I won’t know. We won’t be back again. We would have had a much more enjoyable time in Osaka.
Contrast this to the Buddhist temple near home, where the nuns and the volunteers always treat us, non-Buddhists, with much kindness, in line with the Buddhist teachings on how you should treat fellow humans. It is a true community there, compared to Henjoko-in, which was more ugly and materialistic than any of the capitalistic establishments elsewhere in Japan.
My disappointment ultimately isn’t sourness from being treated poorly, which I can handle, but a revulsion at this temple and its inhabitants who put on their traditional religious clothing for the morning prayer in the ornate room as a facade for the tourists to solicit donations, but wasn’t particularly religious at other times, smoked and watched baseball. The temple seemingly was merely an empty shell with greed encapsulated. Because of this temple, any spiritual feeling I might have felt strolling around Koya-san was completely gone.
The Okunoin cemetery:
It’s pretty funny to see English in it. This is presumably the corner where the Panasonic family was buried:
Other temples in Koya-san:
Tour group waiting to go to a night cemetery tour:
We even saw a Kumon (tutoring center, which also spread to the US) on the main street.
