Omikuji Omamori Good Luck Charms

Omikuji Omamori Good Luck Charms 御御籤

The Japanese characters for good and bad luck are interesting and easy to remember. First you imagine a rice pot. If you are lucky, then the pot is full of rice and closed with a lid, making the character for good luck (吉). If, on the other hand, you are unlucky, then there is no rice in your pot, giving you the character for bad luck (凶).

Omikuji

The white pieces of paper that you see tied to tree branches in Shinto shrines all contain the unlucky character and have been left at the shrine in the hope that the deity enshrined there will change the luck to good. These pieces of paper are called omikuji and you get them like this: a numbered strip of bamboo is drawn at random from a cylindrical container with a small hole in one end. Then, for a nominal charge of about 100 yen, the strip is exchanged for an omikuji. The good luck omikuji are taken home and treasured, but as bad luck is contagious, the ones informing people that they have no rice in their pots are left behind. The most common souvenir for people to buy at a shrine is a lucky charm called an omamori which usually resembles a baggage tag. Omamori contain printed prayers which have been consecrated before the gods by the priests who made them. They are generally used to ward off evil, but now can be bought for many different purposes, ranging from easy childbirth to traffic safety.

Omamori

The omamori at Shoko-in, popularly known as the Traffic Safety Monkey Temple, have an interesting little tale (no pun intended) attached to them. In the temple, there is a statue of a monkey which used to pick persimmons and walnuts for the priest who lived there. One day a hunter shot the monkey and the priest found it, nursed it back to health, and gave it an omamori to protect it. When the other monkeys in the vicinity saw the omamori, they came to get one, too. When the hunter saw them, he gave up shooting monkeys. Some shrines have found modern adaptations of omamori to be highly lucrative. Take a look at the backs of cars in Kyoto and it won't be long before you see a road safety sticker from the Tanukidani (Racoon-Dog Valley) Fudo-in Temple. These stickers cost 300 yen, but the blessing that goes with them costs from 5,000 yen for a week to 50,000 yen for a year.