Morioka Sansa Odori — luxury itineraries and concierge.

Morioka Sansa Odori, from an operator's side.

Sansa Odori fills Morioka's central avenue on the evenings of 1 to 4 August with a parade of drummers, flute players and dancers organised into troupes from companies, schools and neighbourhoods across Iwate. The sound is the point; a client who has only seen a single taiko group on a stage is not prepared for massed taiko in the hundreds working the same rhythm down a closed street. Each night ends with the wa-odori, an open dancing circle in which spectators are drawn in — the moment that converts a good evening into the story clients tell afterwards, and the one most visitors miss because they have already started walking to the hotel.

• The parade is long and repetitive by design, so the value is in knowing which section to watch and when to stop watching, not in seeing all of it.
• The closing circle is the highlight and the least publicised part of the evening; clients who are not positioned and briefed for it simply go home before it starts.
• Morioka is a modest city and 1 August is the opening of the Tohoku festival week, so rooms are taken by regional visitors moving on to Aomori, Akita and Sendai in the following days.

Basing decides the file.

Central Morioka near the parade route is the practical base and the walk back matters, because the drumming finishes late and the streets empty all at once. The city's inventory is limited and business-grade at the top; Shizukuishi and the Hachimantai onsen resorts are the better rooms if the file will accept the transfer.

When to start.

Nine to twelve months. Morioka is less contested than Aomori but it opens the Tohoku week, so it is booked by people planning the whole circuit rather than this one city, and it goes on their timetable rather than on its own.