Anybody that followed me on my trip to Japan in 2018 where I visited 88 temples in Shikoku, is aware that at each temple I collected a stamp in my stamp book or Nõkyõchõ. For 300 yen, I queued up at the temple office and received 3 stamps and Japanese caligraphy. Whilst collecting them, I wondered what actually was written on each page of the book. Now I know.
Based on the stamp in my book from Temple 13, Dainichiji – Temple of the Great Sun, where the lady below first wrote and then stamped (many did it the other way around):
The final stamp looked like this:
The red stamp in the top right hand corner is the temple number, here number 13.
The red stamp in the middle represents the main deity of the temple, in this case Jūichimen Kannon Bosatsu
The red stamp in the bottom left corner is the name of the temple, in this case Dainichiji
The caligraphy on the right is a thank you from the deity.
The middle top character represents the sanskrit character for the temple deity.
The rest of the middle caligraphy represents the name of the temple deity.
The caligraphy on the left represents the temple name.
