Omikuji are pre-printed paper slips ranging across a fixed scale from great blessing down to great curse, drawn at random, either pulled directly from a box or retrieved by shaking out a numbered stick and matching it to a corresponding drawer, and shrines either print their own or order stock from specialist printers who supply many shrines at once.
Who draws, and the small fee
Any visitor may draw an omikuji for a small fee dropped into a box, with no restriction on who may participate, a genuinely open and casual practice compared to several other objects in this collection.
Leaving the bad luck behind
Custom holds that a favorable fortune may be kept and taken home, but an unfavorable one is generally tied to a designated wire rack or a pine tree branch on the shrine grounds rather than carried away, a physical act of leaving the bad luck at the shrine instead of bringing it home. Shrines periodically clear and burn the accumulated tied slips, the same respectful fire disposal given to other paper ritual objects in Shinto practice.
A fixed scale, not a free reading
Unlike a tarot draw or an open ended reading, the omikuji scale is fixed and printed, running from great blessing through blessing, small blessing and further gradations down to great curse, so the outcome is one of a limited set of standard results rather than a unique message composed for the individual drawing it.