Imamiya Ebisu Jinja

This guide to Imamiya Ebisu Jinja in Osaka opens with three thousand young women competing for fifty spots to become the shrine's fuku musume, the lucky maidens who work the Toka Ebisu festival every January. It traces the shrine's roots back to the year 600 as a guardian post for nearby Shitenno-ji, and how a coastal fishing shrine grew into Osaka's temple of business luck during the Edo-period merchant boom. Come during the festival and watch the maidens shake bundles of bamboo at the crowd.