Okuno-in is a very large cemetery under the shade of age-old Japanese cedars. The site is as beautiful and enchanting as any California redwood forest and mixed in with the ancient trees are thousands and thousands of grave markers. You see very old lichen-eroded gravestones and new ones, from commoners to samurais and high priests. One monument was built by an insecticide manufacturer to beg forgiveness for all the ants he exterminated.
This strange, serene, melancholic and deeply spiritual place makes for an unforgetable walk up the slopes of the mountian to a place where Kobo Daishi is believed to have been in a state of meditation for the last 1,200 years.
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