Last Updated: Jun 23, 2024

Mt. Omine & Ominesan-ji

Back to Nature, Back to Myself

Donny Kimball
19 min readJun 23, 2024

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The main approach to Ominesan-ji on Nara Prefecture’s sacred Mt. Omine.
This story was originally published on donnykimball.com and has been syndicated here on Medium.

Let me preface this article by saying that this one is going to be quite different from my usual area guides. While I will certainly be detailing the significance of Mt. Omine and its ancient temple complex of Ominesan-ji throughout, this piece is also going to get quite… personal. If you just want to skip to the details on how to get to this sacred part of Nara and why you should visit, you can skip the parts about me and my spiritual quest on the mountain.

Assuming that you actually care enough to read the whole thing, know that this is going to be a really, really, really long post. I suggest settling in first, as the below sections contain some much-needed self-revelations. If you just want to skip to the nuts and bolts of how to tackle Mt. Omine and Ominesan-ji yourselves, though, know that I won’t be offended. Much of this one is first and foremost for me.

With that said, allow me to begin by telling you about my misogi this year…

A Twisted Soul

A yamabushi descends from the upper sections of Nara Prefecture’s Mt. Omine, the birthplace of Shugendo in Japan.

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Donny Kimball

I'm a travel writer and freelance digital marketer who blogs about the sides of Japan that you can't find in the mainstream media. https://donnykimball.com/