What's a Shuincho - Japan-Sunday

Whenever you visit a shrine or temple you definitely need to buy your first Shuincho.
A shuincho is a book where you collect the unique stamps and kaligraphy writings of a buddhist temple or shinto shrine. It's a piece of culture and art, especially when one of the old masters is showing his kaligraphy skills .

Visiting the different shrines ands temples is a good deed because a stamp (normally, Meiji Jingu not) costs 300Yen which is some sort of donation.

Collecting those stamps is a kind of personal spiritual pilgrimage. There is nospecific shrine that you need to visit nor is there any order. You only have to keep in mind that not every temple offers a stamp and otherwise some of them offer more than one.

 

 

That was just a part of my stamps that I collected since 01.01.2016 when I bought my first "stamp book" at Zōjō-ji in Tokyo. the following are some of my favorites:

Left: Itsukushima Jinja on Miyajima Island in Hiroshima
Right: Gokoku Jinja next to the Hiroshima Castle

Beside the "normal" shuincho there's also a special one for doing the pilgrimage on Shikoku to 88 specific temples, I tried it in August 2015 but failed miserably...

Time to get your Shuincho, when you are in Japan.