Luck is something that comes up in many forms in Japan. My mother watches the morning news waiting for them to tell her what her lucky color is for the day and what level of luck to expect that day. When I was born my family consulted a numerologist to look at the names they were thinking of giving me in order to mark each possibility with an X meaning bad, a triangle meaning OK, a circle meaning good, and a circle within a circle meaning very good. My former boss would consult the annual fortune almanac that tells you whether a particular day might be auspicious or not and he would open new stores on dates that sounded best. If you’ve ever visited, you may have gotten an omikuji fortune at a shrine or temple, paying a small fee to usually shake a tall box that will give you a stick with a number on it which corresponds to a particular piece of paper that will tell you what kind of luck you have. If it’s good, you might keep it, if it’s bad, you can tie it to a string on the grounds and “leave your bad luck behind”. It’s meant more for encouragement or as a gentle warning to be careful rather than some kind of heavenly lottery win or eternal damnation.

I’ve used it here as a vehicle to show more of the berry world, what happens within it, and how different or the same it might be region to region. Maybe the customs are similar, maybe they are not, even though their base berry belief is the same.