The forecast for this weekend changed a few times, but luckily it didn’t rain on Saturday. I went hiking to Mt. Takao (Takao-san) for the first time.
It was a group trip with my yoga/pirates instructor Misa and her students. On the way to the mountain top, we stopped at the Yakuoin Temple for a yoga session and lunch. I think this was also my first time to have a full-course shōjin ryōri, Buddhist monk’s vegetarian meal.
Buddhist cuisine is an East Asian cuisine which is followed by some believers of Buddhism. It is primarily plant-based, a manifestation of the general Buddhist precept of ahimsa (non-violence). […]
Vegetarian cuisine is known as zhāicài (“(Buddhist) vegetarian food”) in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan; đồ chay in Vietnam; shōjin ryōri (精進料理, devotion cuisine) in Japan; sachal eumsik (“temple food”) in Korea and by other names in many countries.
— from Wikipedia: Buddhist cuisine
Although shōjin ryōri restaurants aren’t something you can easily find in Tokyo (probably different in places like Kyoto), many of individual dishes we had were really common Japanese cuisine.
I told Misa-san that I thought this yoga & lunch trip to Mt. Takao was a great idea 🙂
More of my photos are on Flickr.