Sanno Matsuri — luxury itineraries and concierge.

Sanno Matsuri, from an operator's side.

Sanno Matsuri belongs to Hie Shrine in Akasaka and is the counterpart to Kanda Matsuri: its grand procession, the Shinko-sai, is staged in even-numbered years while Kanda takes the odd. The column moves for most of a day through Akasaka, Nagatacho and the Imperial Palace side of central Tokyo, in court dress and at ceremonial pace. It is the most dignified of the Edo festivals and much the least crowded, which for a certain kind of client is the whole argument. The dates sit in mid-June and move each year.

• The grand procession runs only in even-numbered years, so the alternation has to be checked before a client is sold the festival rather than after.
• Mid-June is the start of the rainy season in Tokyo, which affects both the day's comfort and the photographs clients came for — it needs saying at the quotation stage.
• The route passes government and diplomatic districts with their own access patterns, so vehicle movement on the day is constrained in ways that are not obvious from a map.

Basing decides the file.

Akasaka puts clients beside Hie Shrine itself; Marunouchi and Hibiya sit on the other end of the route and suit a broader Tokyo itinerary. Either works on foot, which matters more than usual here because the day's road access is genuinely awkward.

When to start.

Six to nine months, and the year matters more than the month. Tokyo in June is not a peak season, so the hotels are the easy part; the work is confirming the procession year, holding the window and building an itinerary that survives a wet morning.