Akita Kanto Matsuri — luxury itineraries and concierge.

Akita Kanto Matsuri, from an operator's side.

Kanto is a balancing act rather than a parade. Each kanto is a long bamboo pole carrying rows of paper lanterns lit from within, and the bearers hold the whole assembly upright on a palm, a forehead, a shoulder or a hip while the street watches to see who drops it. It runs on the evenings of 3 to 6 August along a closed section of Akita's main avenue, with daytime skill competitions elsewhere in the city. The evening show has reserved seating sold in advance, and that is the whole operational story: the seated view is the festival, and the standing view behind it is a wall of backs.

• The performance is vertical and close to the ground-level crowd, so a standing position two rows back sees lanterns and nothing of the balancing that clients came for.
• Akita is a small prefectural capital at the far side of Tohoku, with modest hotel stock that fills entirely for these four nights and no neighbouring city able to absorb the overflow in the same week.
• Access is the quiet problem — the Akita Shinkansen runs a limited service and the reserved seats for the festival dates go early, so the journey has to be committed before the accommodation question is even settled.

Basing decides the file.

Central Akita within walking distance of the route is the right answer and the scarce one; the city's rooms are limited and largely business-grade. Where they run out we base at the Nyuto or Tazawako onsen ryokan an hour or so inland, which buys a far better room and costs an hour on the road after the lanterns come down.

When to start.

Twelve months. The dates are fixed, the city is small, and the same week takes every other hotel and reserved rail seat in northern Japan. Rooms first, rail second, seating third — in that order, and each is harder than the last to recover if it is left.