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Today is another national hoiday in Japan. Not content with having the first three days of the new year off, they (wisely) decided to take the 10th off as well. Today is the coming of age day for twenty year olds. In Japan twenty is the age of adulthood, you can legally smoke, drink and vote and today celebrates that fact.

Today is also the festival of Ebisu. This is a Shinto (a religion unique to Japan) festival celebrating the god of fortune. Regarding my bad luck with Japan religions I needed to do well at this festival and I think I did. I had more bad luck losing about 7000 yen or thirty quid on pachinko trying to replicate my earlier success.

Here is a picture:

This one is shrine worker handing worshippers lucky bamboo stalks which should be kept for a year and then burned for the most luck. You are however expected to pay 1500 yen or 7 pound per lucky charm for the shoot to further enhance its luck. Many had bought up to six per shoot. We (wisely/foolishly?) decided not to and left the shoots in a lucky place in the shrine. I am dammed either way. Worshipping allegedly “false idols” or not worshipping them enough. Can you show me the way to hell please?

This is a picture of man attaching his fortune to tree in the shrine covered with lucky (and not so lucky) fortunes bought at a kiosk nearby. I bought one (for 200 yen) which had minimum luck advising me not to have children, warning of bad life prospects and other misfortunes. In order to ward off these bad prophecies you are advised to tie them to a part of the shrine which is what they have done to the tree below.

It`s actually the third time I have celebrated this festival. On Sunday we went to a small town near Kobe about two hours away from Osaka called Tamba. There was a small shrine where you throw ten yen as an offering and they give you five yen or “go en” back. This has lucky connotations linguistically in Japan for the year.

We ate that day at a German restaurant. Of course I was the only one who could stomach the food coming from Europe. The rice was bizarrely covered in butter which was dificult for the Japanese palate to accept. I am actually gaining weight from the rest of the family not being able to finish their meals and turning to “human rubbish bin Simon” to finish for them. So I ate deer, pork and roast beef in one sitting. If you can`t eat it don`t order it!

This afternoon we also went to a small shrine near our house to pray for good luck but the evening festival in Imamiya was the largest and most fun. I played three lucky games trying to win a PSP but instead won a balloon and straw which make an annoying noise, a lego doll and an air gun which combined (in my small mind) could arguably be better than the prize I was after. Simple minds eh….