Blog
Articles on recording and organising goshuin, written by the author of the iOS app “Goshuin Ledger”.
What is a goshuin? What it is, what is written on it, and what you take home
A goshuin is the brush writing and vermilion seal you receive as proof of a visit to a Japanese shrine or temple. What each part of it means, where the practice came from, and what to do with pages you cannot read once you are home.
- Senso-ji goshuin: where to go, when the desk is open, and what to prepare
- How to ask for a goshuin in Japanese: the phrases and the whole sequence at the desk
- Goshuincho size and page count: how the book is built before you fill it
- How to read the Japanese era date written on your goshuin
- Is a goshuin a souvenir? What you are receiving, and how to treat it
- How to collect goshuin in Japan: a before-you-go checklist
- Goshuin vs shrine stamp: which English words mean the same thing, and which do not
- Your goshuincho filled up mid-trip: three ways forward, and how to read it back home
- Which temple or shrine is this goshuin from? How to check
- Why your goshuin came on a loose sheet of paper
Keeping a list of your goshuin: the rows and columns that let you look one up later
A list answers what the book cannot: have I been here before, and which book holds it. How to choose the rows and the columns, and how a notebook, a spreadsheet, an app and print compare.
- Castle seals and goshuin: separate books, one record
- Keeping goshuin in a spreadsheet: the columns to use, and three places it breaks
- Keeping goshuin records as PDF and CSV: when to export and when to back up
- Choosing what to record for each goshuin: what you can add later, and what you cannot
- Printing a record of your goshuin: what goes on the paper, and what stays off
- What to take out of a goshuin record before you show it to anyone
Goshuin photos piled up on your phone: organise them by place, visit date and book
How to turn a phone full of goshuin photos back into a record that knows the shrine or temple, the visit date, and the book and page: telling the capture date from the visit date, leaving what you cannot confirm marked as unconfirmed, with a worked sample.
- Why the dates in your goshuincho are out of order, and how to keep visit-date order without redoing the book
- How to photograph a goshuin: light, angle and framing for a photo you can still read later
- Did I already receive a goshuin here? Checking your record on a revisit
- A nokyocho carries no date: recording the visit behind each stacked seal
- Will your goshuin records survive a phone change? What to check before you move them
- No account, stored on the device: how to choose a goshuin record app
- Is there an app that logs all the goshuin photos you piled up at once?
- Photographing a goshuin: how far is all right?
- Behind on recording your goshuin: where to start again
- When was this goshuin? Tracing a visit date the page never recorded
- Why the date on your goshuin is in a Japanese era, and how to live with it in a record
- When your goshuincho multiply: one record for books, pages and visits
- For anyone holding a stack of goshuin sheets they never pasted in
- The date on your kakioki goshuin is blank. Do you write it in yourself?