Sanja Matsuri — luxury itineraries and concierge.

Sanja Matsuri, from an operator's side.

Sanja Matsuri belongs to Asakusa Shrine and fills the streets around Senso-ji for three days on the third weekend of May. Dozens of neighbourhood mikoshi are carried at shoulder height through packed lanes, accompanied by drums, chanting and the tattooed members of the old Asakusa associations who traditionally appear on the final morning. It is the least genteel of Japan's famous festivals and the one that most surprises clients who expect Kyoto restraint. Operationally it is a crowd-management file: no ticketing, no seating, narrow streets and a date that shifts every year with the calendar.

• There is no reserved viewing of any kind, so the only things an operator controls are position, timing and the route out — everything else is the crowd's decision.
• The date moves with the weekend, so a Tokyo leg planned around a fixed week can miss the festival entirely unless the file is built the other way round.
• Asakusa's own accommodation is mid-market and the good Tokyo hotels are half an hour away through streets that close, which makes the transfer plan the real work.

Basing decides the file.

Clients stay in Marunouchi, Ginza or Nihonbashi and come in for the day; Asakusa's own stock does not meet a luxury brief. The trade-off is the transfer, which is why we set a drop point and walk the last stretch rather than trying to drive to the shrine.

When to start.

Six months is comfortable for hotels, but the file opens before the dates are confirmed. We block the likely window in mid-to-late May and firm it up the moment the shrine publishes, rather than waiting for a date to plan around.