Nagasaki Kunchi — luxury itineraries and concierge.

Nagasaki Kunchi, from an operator's side.

Kunchi is the autumn festival of Suwa Shrine and it looks like nowhere else in Japan, because Nagasaki spent the closed centuries trading with China and the Netherlands and the festival absorbed both. Dragon dances, drum-mounted boats spun on their axis by teams of men, and floats built as European ships are performed in a handful of fixed venues across 7, 8 and 9 October. The performing districts rotate on a fixed multi-year cycle, so the programme genuinely differs year to year. Seating at the venues is limited, sold in advance and gone quickly, and the alternative is following the troupes through the streets on foot.

• The performances happen at a small number of set venues with finite seating that is released and sold well ahead, so late files watch from the street or not at all.
• Nagasaki is a long way from everywhere — the rail approach from Fukuoka involves a change and the airport is a transfer of its own — and the journey is what most often gets underestimated on an itinerary built around the dates.
• October in Kyushu is comfortable and popular, and a city with limited high-end inventory loses those rooms to the festival and the season together.

Basing decides the file.

Central Nagasaki near the tram spine puts clients within reach of the performance venues and the streets the troupes move through, which is the deciding factor on the days themselves. The harbour-side hotels are the better rooms and are perfectly workable; the city is compact and the trams run well, but the good rooms are few and they go early.

When to start.

Nine to twelve months. The seating is the first hard constraint and the hotels the second, and the access — flights or the Kyushu rail leg — is the one agents routinely leave until last and then find priced against them.