Wakayama Hidden Gems

Wakayama is mountains that reach the sea, and the wet, steep terrain is the reason it became sacred rather than agricultural. Koyasan is a monastic town at 800 metres in a ring of peaks, founded by Kukai in 816 and still functioning: over fifty temples take overnight guests, morning prayers start before dawn, and the Okunoin cemetery runs two kilometres through cedar forest with more than 200,000 graves, including those of warlords who spent their lives fighting each other. The Kumano Kodo, a network of pilgrimage routes to three grand shrines, has been walked for a thousand years and is one of only two pilgrimage trails in the world with UNESCO listing. The coast is a different proposition — warm, Kuroshio-washed, with hot springs at Shirahama that have been in use since the seventh century and a tuna port at Katsuura. The peninsula's rainfall is among the highest in Japan.