At the entrance they were selling prayer beads, amulets, fortunes and blank accordion style books. As I paid for my book, I saw a rubber stamp and red over-inked stamp pad that looked just like the temple. A little further on I came across another stamp and red ink pad that showed the famous Meiji iris gardens. I noticed several people carrying books like mine standing in line. I discovered they were waiting to have a monk stamp some images in red on the page and then write in calligraphy, a message such as good fortune and the name of the temple and the date.
Summer is the hot, humid, rainy season.
The monk stamped three red images and did a calligraphic blessing and placed a piece of rice paper in the book as a blotter. I truly felt blessed. I was thrilled with my page of calligraphy and red stamps. Little did I know that over the next few weeks I would climb hundreds, perhaps thousands of steps to an astounding number of Temples and Shrines and that I would bow and ask and receive a total of 24 blessing pages of different stamps, always red and calligraphy always beautiful. I did not realize that these accordion books are used by spiritual pilgrims.