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.