Chichibu Yomatsuri — luxury itineraries and concierge.

Chichibu Yomatsuri, from an operator's side.

Chichibu Yomatsuri is one of Japan’s major night float festivals, held at Chichibu Shrine on 2 and 3 December. The floats are lantern-hung and enormous, hauled through the town by hand and up a slope near the end of the night, with fireworks overhead in cold, clear December air. It sits close enough to Tokyo to look easy on a map and is not: the town is small, the rail line into it is single-purpose, and everyone who comes leaves within the same two hours.

• Chichibu has very little accommodation of any standard, so most clients arrive and depart the same evening and the whole file turns on the transfer plan.
• The best of the festival is late — the hill haul and the fireworks — which is exactly when the outbound crush begins.
• December nights in the Chichibu basin are cold and the standing is long, so the comfort plan is not an afterthought.

Basing decides the file.

Practically, clients base in Tokyo and travel in for the evening; Chichibu’s own inventory is small and books out locally. Where a file wants to stay closer, the Okuchichibu and Nagatoro onsen ryokan are the sensible compromise — modest rooms, a much shorter journey home at midnight.

When to start.

Six months, which sounds generous for a two-hour trip from Tokyo and is not. Local rooms and reserved viewing are both scarce, and private vehicles for the evening are committed well before December.