Takayama Matsuri — luxury itineraries and concierge.

Takayama Matsuri, from an operator's side.

Takayama Matsuri runs twice a year — the Sanno festival on 14–15 April and the Hachiman festival on 9–10 October — and it is widely counted among Japan's three most beautiful festivals. The floats are lacquered, gilded and centuries old, and the evening processions through the old town by lantern light are the reason to be there. The constraint is simple and severe: Takayama is a small town, its ryokan are excellent and few, and the festival fills every one of them.

• Ryokan inventory in Takayama is tiny relative to festival demand, and the best rooms are held by returning guests year to year.
• The evening float procession is the highlight and the hardest part of the town to see comfortably without a planned position.
• Takayama pairs naturally with Shirakawa-go and the Japan Alps, so the festival justifies a region rather than a stop.

Basing decides the file.

Staying in Takayama itself is the whole point, and the reason the file has to be built early. Where the town is full we base at Okuhida's onsen ryokan and run private transfers in for the evening procession.

When to start.

Twelve months for ryokan in town. This is the constraint that decides whether the file works, so it is the first thing we check and the first thing we contract.