Sketching Japan: Blessings on a bridge in the holy city of Kōyasan.

You hear them before you see them – the monks and the pilgrims, walking through the Okunoin on a brisk Tuesday morning.

As the monks grow near, it is the sound of their wooden sandals (known as geta) going clickety-clack against the cobblestones that alerts you to their approach.

The pilgrims, however – dressed in their pilgrim’s white kimono jackets and conical straw hats – are betrayed by the bells hanging from their wooden walking poles, jingling lightly each time the poles strike the path.

Even normal visitors announce their presence when they ring ancient bronze bells, such as the one hung in front of a small shrine on the other side of the Nakanohashi Bridge – one of four stone bridges in the Okunoin.

Home to over 200,000 gravestones (making it the largest cemetery in Japan), the Okunoin has been called the most sacred place in Kōyasan, itself one of the most sacred cities in the country. It was settled in 819 by Kobo Daishi, founder of the Shingon sect of Buddhism, and it is his mausoleum to which all paths through the cemetery lead – the very paths that the monks and the pilgrims walk.

Their sounds precede them, and linger in the air long after they’ve left.

As for me? For once I’m not moving on a sacred path through Japan, having just completed my eight days on the 88-Temple Circuit around Shodoshima Island. In Kōyasan, I instead find a spot on the Nakanohashi Bridge and decide to let the path move around me as I sketch.

The pilgrims and tourists form a steady stream along the cedar-lined walkway, but it’s a passing group of some twenty or thirty monks that I’ll remember the most. They never actually stop walking, but when they see what I’m up to, they crane their necks, ooh and aah over my sketch, and wish me ganbatte a hundred times as they pass.

It’s a phrase I learned well on the Shodoshima pilgrimage – as my uncle in Yokosuka explained, it means, Be strong, keep going, don’t give up! I loved saying ganbatte to other pilgrims on Shodoshima, and the chance to do so here in Kōyasan – and to then hear it again in return, this time in regards to my sketching  – feels almost as if I’m being showered in blessings by these kind-hearted monks, their black robes swishing in time to their steps.

We may have come to the Okunoin for different reasons, but I can’t help thinking we’ll each walk away feeling blessed today.