Photos: WolfgangMichel · CC0 (1, 2) · WolfgangMichel · CC BY-SA 4.0
Shinnō Matsuri (22 to 23 November) at Sukunahikona Shrine on Dōshōmachi, Osaka's pharmaceutical street since the Edo period, hands out yellow papier-mâché tigers against disease, a charm first given during an 1822 epidemic. About 400 drug companies run it.
Why it's unique
It is an Osaka City intangible folk property (2007), a festival of the medicine trade on the street that trade has occupied since the Edo period.
What you do is queue with residents for the paper tigers, then go up to the shrine's free museum of the medicine trade.
Before you go
The shrine's third floor holds the free Kusuri no Dōshōmachi Museum of the medicine trade, open year-round; head offices of Japan's big pharma still line the street.
Queue for the tigers; they run out.
