Genko yoshi, A4
Japanese manuscript paper on A4, with a square for every character and a narrow gutter beside each column for furigana.
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The 400-character sheet is the unit of measurement
Standard genko yoshi holds 400 characters, twenty columns of twenty, and Japanese writing is counted in sheets rather than words. A submission described as 30 sheets means 12,000 characters, and literary prizes, school assignments and publishers all state length this way. If you are writing to a specified length, the sheet count is the specification, which is the main practical reason to work on the ruled paper rather than in a word processor.
What the side gutter is for
The narrow channel running alongside each column is for furigana, the small kana printed beside a kanji to show its reading. It is not decorative margin, and leaving it out is the most common error in improvised versions of this paper. Editors, teachers and typesetters all expect to find readings there, particularly for names and for kanji outside the common list.
Writing direction, and printing it
Genko yoshi is traditionally written vertically, top to bottom, with columns running right to left, so the sheet starts at what a left-to-right reader would call the back. Horizontal genko yoshi exists and is used in some schools and for technical writing. The traditional stock size is B4, which is larger than A4 and harder to find outside Japan. A4 prints on any machine anywhere, and the squares stay correct as long as the page is not rescaled. Check that with the calibration sheet if you are writing with a brush pen, where square size genuinely affects how the character sits.
Printing it accurately
This only measures correctly if your printer doesn't rescale the page. In the print dialog set Scale: 100%, not "Fit to page" or "Shrink oversized pages". If you're not sure it worked, print the calibration page, measure the ruler on it with a real ruler, and it will tell you exactly what your printer is doing to the page.