Friday night, at the Hanazono Shrine in Shinjuku:

I took this pic at the Tori no ichi – a festival about good luck.  These…

…are bamboo rakes, to help you ‘rake in’ good fortune, each one so elaborately decorated that they made the place feel like a dragon’s treasure horde.

Other stalls at the festival were selling all kinds of delicious things to eat, including my new favourite Japanese food, takoyaki.

Under the sauces and bonito flakes imagine six small portions of scrambled egg fried into golfball shapes filled with pickled ginger, green onions and (you can see a tentacle, above top right) these guys:

I didn’t buy a rake. I already felt lucky enough.