Wakayama

The monastic town at eight hundred metres is not a site with a hotel attached. More than fifty of its temples take overnight guests in their own buildings, which means tatami rooms, shared bathing, vegetarian monastic cooking served in your room, and morning prayers that begin before dawn and which guests are welcome to attend.

Book it as the centrepiece rather than a bed. Reserve well ahead, expect to be asked to be in by a set hour in the evening, and accept the early start — the fire ritual at one of the temples at daybreak is the thing people remember. The other reason to stay is the cemetery: two kilometres of cedar forest and a couple of hundred thousand memorials, including those of warlords who spent their lives at war with each other, and it is a completely different place walked at night with the lanterns lit than it is at midday.

Four days, and this is a prefecture that punishes a short visit because everything in it is far apart on slow roads. The three destinations are Koyasan in the north-west mountains, the Kumano pilgrimage routes and shrines in the interior, and the southern coast around Shirahama and Nachi.

Distances. Osaka to Koyasan is about two hours by private railway and cable car. Koyasan to the Kumano area is a long mountain drive of three hours or more, or a much longer bus journey. The coastal railway around the peninsula from Osaka to Nachi takes roughly four hours.

The itinerary that works: Koyasan for a night in a temple lodging, down to the Kumano valleys for two nights walking sections of the pilgrimage trail, and out along the coast. Trying to do Koyasan and Kumano as day trips from Osaka is the classic error — each is a full day of travel alone.

Koyasan is reached by the Nankai line from Osaka-Namba to Gokurakubashi, about an hour and forty minutes, then a cable car and a bus — a sequence that is simpler than driving the mountain road. The coast is served by the JR Kisei line: the Kuroshio limited express runs from Shin-Osaka to Shirahama in about two and a half hours and Kii-Katsuura in four, which is a long ride, so treat the far south as its own trip. Kumano Kodo trailheads depend on local buses from Kii-Tanabe and Shingu that run a handful of times a day; several sections have luggage forwarding. Nachi Falls is a bus from Kii-Katsuura.

The trails through the interior are not a single path but a set of routes converging on three grand shrines, walked for a thousand years and carrying one of only a couple of pilgrimage listings of their kind in the world. Walking all of it takes weeks, and almost nobody visiting for a few days should try.

The workable approach is to pick one well-served section, typically a day or a day and a half between two valleys, and to use the bus network and the luggage-forwarding services that exist along it. Trailhead buses run a handful of times a day, so the timetable dictates the plan rather than the other way round — check it before booking accommodation, not after. Go in spring or late autumn: this is among the wettest parts of the country, the paths are stone and root and become genuinely hazardous in heavy rain.

Late summer, when typhoons hit this coast harder than almost anywhere else in Japan — the Kii peninsula catches Pacific storms directly, roads close, and the pilgrimage trails become genuinely dangerous. This is not a theoretical risk; it is the reason to plan Kumano for spring or autumn.

Winter at Koyasan is very cold — it sits above 800 metres — and while the temple lodgings run all year, the experience of an unheated corridor in January is a specific taste. August is hot and humid on the coast and in the valleys, and the trails are hard work in it. Late October to November and April to May are the windows.

Split it. Koyasan is entirely public transport: the private line from Osaka, a cable car, and a bus around the mountain-top town, which is closed to casual driving anyway.

Kumano is car country. The pilgrimage routes are trailheads connected by valley roads with a few buses a day, and the shuttle system between them is designed for walkers with time rather than visitors with a schedule. The coastal railway serves Shirahama and Nachi adequately but not the interior. If your trip includes Kumano, hire a car in Osaka or at the coast; if it is only Koyasan and the coast, you do not need one.

The Kii peninsula takes extraordinary rain, and the pilgrimage trails are least pleasant during the June rainy season and most risky during September typhoons — April, May, October and November are the walking months. Koyasan is high enough to be cold: it snows in winter and the temple lodgings are unheated in the corridors, though winter is when the cemetery is at its most striking. The coast stays mild, with January highs near 11°C, and Shirahama's beach season runs July and August. Mikan oranges are picked from November to January, and the plum blossom around Minabe opens in February.

Wakayama grows more mikan than any other prefecture, picked from November into January, and more ume plums, mostly around Minabe — the Nanko variety cured as umeboshi is the national standard. Katsuura lands tuna by longline rather than net and runs a morning auction that visitors can watch from a gallery. Wakayama ramen is a tonkotsu-shoyu bowl usually eaten with a side of pressed mackerel sushi and a boiled egg taken from the counter. Koyasan's temple lodgings serve shojin ryori, the vegetarian cooking developed for monastic life, including sesame tofu made on site.

A first visit is Koyasan, staying the night in a temple. The mountain-top town is a working monastic centre with over a hundred temples, many of which take guests, feed them vegetarian meals and let them attend the morning service. The cemetery, two kilometres of moss and cedar with two hundred thousand graves in it, is best walked at night or at dawn, which is a reason to stay rather than to visit.

A second visit is Kumano, on foot. The pilgrimage routes across the peninsula have been walked for a thousand years, the three grand shrines at the end of them sit in river valleys and forest, and the waterfall at Nachi behind its pagoda is the image of the region. Walk a section rather than driving between the shrines — the paths are the point.