International Okinawan Cultural Education Foundation

10/09/2026

10/06/2026

Never ever ever give up!

Every monk who begins the kaihōgyō on Mount Hiei, outside Kyoto, carries two things on the belt of his white robe: a length of rope and a short knife.

They are for him. If he fails to finish, tradition says he must use one or the other.

The practice is a thousand days of walking the mountain's pilgrimage routes, spread across seven years, praying at hundreds of shrines along the way.

Years one through three: 100 consecutive days of 30 kilometers, starting around midnight, in straw sandals, in every weather.

Years four and five: 200 days a year.

Year six: 100 days of 60 kilometers.

Year seven: 100 days of 84 kilometers — two marathons a day, through Kyoto and back up the mountain — then a final 100 days of 30.

And after day 700 comes the dōiri.

The monk enters a hall and sits for nine days without food, without water, and without sleep, chanting. Two attendants stay with him to make sure he does not lie down and to confirm he is still breathing.

Doctors will tell you three days without water is about the human limit. Nine is the rite.

Since 1885, forty-six monks have completed all of it. The rest who tried are said to be buried in unmarked graves on the mountain.

Yūsai Sakai was a late arrival. He did not enter Mount Hiei until he was 39, after the rest of his life had come apart.

He finished his first thousand days in 1980.

Then he started over.

He finished the second in 1987, at 61. Roughly the distance around the Earth, walked twice, in sandals, mostly in the dark.

He is one of three men known to have done it twice.

Asked how, he said to live each day as if it were your entire life.

He died on September 23, 2013, at 87, in a temple on the mountain.

The rope and the knife are now called symbolic. He carried them for fourteen years anyway.

10/05/2026

Make plans to attend now!

09/28/2026

Our founder didn't build this to be recognized. He built it because no one else would.

For forty years, he trained. He traveled to Okinawa. He built relationships with masters who trusted him to carry their traditions with care. He came home and asked himself what this part of the world was missing.

And then he got to work.

IOCEF exists not because it was a good business idea, but because someone decided the mission mattered enough to give everything to it.

We think you'll feel that when you walk through our doors.

Come visit us in Varnell, Georgia.