Banshoji sits in the Osu shopping arcade — a working temple completely wrapped by the retail bustle, with neon-lit shopfronts on three sides and only the curved tile roofs and a small entrance gate to mark it off. The temple complex includes a five-storey pagoda, a meditation hall, a tea garden hidden behind the arcade wall, and a daily evening puppet show featuring mechanical doll re-enactments of the three Oda warlords from Aichi: Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu.
The puppet show, free and open to the public, runs four times a day from a clock above the temple gate and is one of the more genuinely entertaining tourist set pieces in the city. Best combined with a wider walk through the Osu arcades.