Is good fortune coming your way?

A return visit to the shrine today in the hope it would be less frantic and I could take better pictures... it wasn't and I didn't! I did however, get a better look at the people buying and selling the omikuji fortunes. Having offered their prayers, many people will draw their fortune from one of the stalls staffed by shrine maidens in white kimonos. After paying a small sum to be allowed to draw one's fortune, a box containing bamboo sticks with numbers is shaken until the tip of a stick with a number pokes its way through the hole at the top of the box.

The shrine maiden looks at the number then gives the drawer a paper with a fortune printed on it corresponding to the number on the stick. The omikuji tells your fortune in various grades ranging from great blessing to ill luck, and comes with detailed explanations concerning your prospects in health, love, money matters and so on.

After reading their fortune, many people tie it somewhere in the shrine - you can see some in the background to the right. I'm told that these are the ones which foretell bad luck and that by tying to a pine tree their good luck will disappear. Judging from the amount tied at the shrine today that's a LOT of misfortune!

Only learn to seize good fortune, for good fortune is always here.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe