Omikuji: Shrine Fortunes

Omikuji are the paper fortunes of Japanese shrines and temples: you shake a box, a numbered stick slides out, and the number gives you a printed slip. This app keeps that custom in your pocket, one slip a day.

THE BOX
• A hundred numbered slips. Shake the phone or press the button; the stick shows its number, and the slip unfolds below.
• One slip per day. It stays with you until midnight, as a slip drawn at a shrine would.
• Seven grades, from dai-kichi, great blessing, to dai-kyō, great misfortune, written in Japanese characters with their meaning.

A POEM ON EVERY SLIP
Many shrines print a short poem on their slips. Here, slip one carries the first poem of the Hyakunin-isshu, the classical anthology of a hundred poets compiled in 1235, and slip one hundred the last.
• Every verse in William N. Porter's English translation of 1909, with the Japanese in Latin letters.
• Porter's own note on each poet: who they were, and the wordplay the translation cannot carry.
• A short modern reading of the verse, and one line of counsel for the day.

TEN MATTERS
Like a shrine slip, each one answers ten everyday questions: a wish, the person you are waiting for, something lost, travel, business, study, love, disputes, moving house and health.

TIE IT OR KEEP IT
At shrines, a poor fortune is often tied to a rack and left behind, and a good one kept in a wallet. Do the same here.
• The year screen counts your slips grade by grade since 1 January.
• It remembers the first slip of the year, the custom of the New Year visit.
• Your rack of tied slips and your wallet of kept ones, for the whole year.

TO READ
• All hundred slips to browse and search by word, poet or number.
• Short articles on the custom: the grades and their order, why slips are tied, the hundred temple lots, poems on slips, the Hyakunin-isshu and Porter's translation.
• A private notebook for what was on your mind when you drew.
• A home screen widget with today's slip, or the verse of the day before you draw.
• An optional daily reminder, off until you turn it on.

The readings and the grades are written for this app; the verses are Porter's, unchanged. Your notes and slips stay on your device.

Free to install, with ads. A single one-time purchase removes them. Everything else is free.