KOYA-SAN, Wakayama Pref. -- If there is one all-round good guy to emerge from the pages of Japanese history, someone for whom nobody seems to have a bad word, it is Kobo Daishi (A.D. 774-835). Buddhist saint, scholar, spiritual healer, calligrapher, poet, sculptor, engineer, supposed originator of the kana syllabary -- what this popular polymath didn't get up to wasn't worth bothering about.
Throughout Japan, there is no lack of places linked with the great man, usually by way of one of the prodigious number of folktales in which he is wont to appear. But the place most closely associated with Kobo Daishi is Koya-san. Here, high among the mountains of Wakayama Prefecture, is the temple complex that has been built around his mausoleum. Depending on your religious persuasion, this is either where the earthly remains of the saint are resting, or it is where he is in deep meditation, awaiting Miroku, the future Buddha. Since Miroku is not due for millions of years, Kobo Daishi still has a fair bit of meditating ahead of him.
As eons-long waiting places go, Koya-san is not unattractive. Kobo Daishi and the two-headed dog that brought him here (you get this kind of thing in stories about the saint) found a lovely spot among the deep, old forests. Ascetics apart, most people take the train here from Osaka, which climbs through the steep mountain folds -- with their tucked-away pockets of hamlets and paddies -- before reaching the 900-meter-high tableland of Koya-san.