Immediately when you begin, you can find a hidden blue Ofuda by shooting the upper right corner of the screen. Collect it and start traveling up. Deal with the Puka Puka ghosts as they arrive, and use the purification wand on the lanterns that you pass to collect more Ofuda power-ups or other items.
As long as you keep moving, and don't cause the Garakotsu zombies to crawl out of the ground, you will encounter nothing but Puka Pukas until you see the red torii structure. You will encounter the small brown Rumurus that like to grab your feet and slow you down. If they do happen to grab you, pass under the torii, and they will be forced to let go.
How you choose to deal with the Rumuru depends on what else is going on around you. If they slow you down, they can cause you to die prematurely. On the otherhand, Rumurus can't kill your directly. If they are the only enemy on the screen, target them immediately. If there are deadly enemies around, target the Rumurus as much as you can until something more dangerous gets closer. If they begin to rush you, swiping them away with your purification wand is always a good idea.
The small red spirits known as Otamas begin to appear around this time. When an entire group (usually consisting of three) of them is defeated in the same manner, they will drop an item. Most of the time, it will be a blue Ofuda, but you may get lucky and earn something else.
Otama will appear up until you reach the bridge. On the bridge, the Hashiritai will appear from one of the corners and jump diagonally across the screen. Rarely does Sayo-chan have to directly face the Hashiritai to hit them, as they have a tendency to jump right into the path of her fire, but it is a good idea to make sure that Sayo is not standing in their way when they appear.
You will find the key right in the middle of the bridge. Collect it so that you can access the boss area. After you do, the stage will stop scrolling up, and start scrolling to the right. There is a well at this point in the game. At this point, if you have not collected at least the yellow Ofuda power-up, you may want to stick around by the well and attempt to obtain it.
The Bake Uri, the spirits disguised as melons, will fly out of the well whenever Sayo stands in particular positions relative to the well. Imagine 16 lines stretching out from the well, all evenly spaced out, including directly above and below, and to the left and right. If Sayo stands on these lines, the Bake Uri come out of the well continuously. If she proceeds to defeat large numbers of them, they will occasionally be replaced by other vegetables. If you hit these other vegetables, they will drop different Ofuda power-ups. Turnips drop blue Ofuda, radishes drop red Ofuda, carrots drop yellow Ofuda, and red beets drop double Ofuda. If you manage to stand there long enough and continuously sweep or shoot the vegetables without causing the Ring of Fire to appear, you will eventually see an onion. If you shoot this onion, it will drop a purification wand which you can collect for an extra life. The order of the appearance of these extra vegetables is as follows: turnip, turnip, turnip, radish, carrot, red beet, radish, red beet, onion. It is only advisable to stay as long as it takes to collect the red, yellow, and double Ofuda.
After running to the right for a while, you will encounter a hut where the first ogei is found. This demon will stretch her neck out of the hut in one of the four cardinal directions in an effort to bite you. You can shoot her head or steer clear of the hut entirely. Once you see the hut, start heading down until you reach the boss area.
Boss[edit]
The boss of stage 1 is known as a mametou, which is quite literally a bean head. His name is Zuzu. It wanders back and forth in a semicircle along the top half of the screen. To fight this boss, Sayo can safely remain on the bottom half of the screen, and shoot up along the center. Every now and then, Zuzu will reach into his bowl of beans and throw them at Sayo. Sometimes he will throw three groups, and sometimes he will only throw two. Move Sayo just enough to avoid getting hit by the thrown beans and resume firing up at Zuzu. You should be able to defeat him without moving a great deal if you stay near the center.
If you manage to beat the game and make it all the way back around to face this boss a second time, you will notice that he is much tougher to beat. He will only ever throw three groups of beans at once, and they will be clustered much closer together, making finding the gaps to dodge the beans much harder. As a result, it is much wiser to attack Zuzu diagonally from the sides of the screen. When he throws beans diagonally, they are much easier to dodge. If he throws beans from the opposite side of the screen, you can dodge them through the gap on the side, and if he throws beans from the same side of the screen, you can dodge them through the gap between the two bottom sets.
If you defeat Zuzu, you will rescue Daikokuten. Daikokuten is variously considered to be the god of wealth, or of the household, particularly the kitchen. He is recognized by his wide face, smile, and a flat hat. He is often portrayed holding a golden mallet called an Uchide Nokozuchi, otherwise known as a magic money mallet, and is seen seated on bales of rice.