Shōjin Ryōri on Kōyasan

After leaving Kyoto, my boyfriend and I hopped several trains, a cable car up the mountainside, and a bus that wound its way up a narrow serpentine road to get to Kōyasan (Mount Kōya), head of the Shingon sect of Buddhism and home to 120 temples. Many of these offer shukubō, temple lodging, which includes dinner — a vegan shōjin ryōri meal, guaranteed to be free of dashi, meat stock, or anything else I usually have to watch out for in Japanese cuisine. This would be a treat for many reasons.

Kyoto: Kitchen Raku Raku

Our first night in Kyoto, we stayed at a Zen Buddhist temple in the Myōshin-ji complex near Kinkaku-ji (the Golden Pavilion). It was a great experience: we slept in the recently-built guest house rather than in the small main temple building itself, but we got to attend a Zen meditation class and have a private tour of the temple, which was established in 1590. Vice Abbot Taka Kawakami speaks good English, having spent something like 8 years in the U.S., and also had plenty of restaurant recommendations for us.

Next Stop, Kyoto

Photo by Peter Morgan

My boyfriend and I are hoping to take a trip to Kyoto next week, which means a whole new city in which to go looking for vegetarian-friendly restaurants. On the one hand, Kyoto is full of temples, so I would think we could find places where people following a Buddhist diet could eat. On the other hand, it’s a traditional city in Japan — and Japan loves its fish.

Kamakura

This past weekend we took a day trip to Kamakura, the city about an hour outside of Tokyo that’s probably most famous for its 13-meter-tall bronze Buddha statue, the second largest in Japan. I had managed to eat a few bites at home before we left, but my boyfriend was running on a completely empty stomach when we arrived, so we picked a place to stop for food without taking vegetarian-friendliness into account.