For most of the year, Kakunodate is the quietest kind of famous: a preserved samurai town in the Akita mountains, black wooden walls and weeping cherry trees, visited for its stillness. For three days in early September, the stillness ends. The Kakunodate Festival sends ornate floats—yama—through the old streets, each crowned with kabuki dolls and carrying its own band of flutes, drums, and dancers. The famous part happens after dark. When two floats meet in a narrow street, their crews negotiate for the right of way. Sometimes agreement is reached. Sometimes it is not, and then comes the yamabukkake—the floats driven into each other, wood against wood, crews heaving, crowds roaring, again and again until one side yields. It is ritualized, ancient, and completely real; the collisions can go on past midnight. The festival, tied to Shinmeisha Shrine and Joju-in Yakushido temple, has run since the Edo period and is inscribed on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list as one of Japan's great float festivals. It is held September 7th through 9th regardless of the day of the week. The Akita Shinkansen stops at Kakunodate Station, ten minutes' walk from the action, which makes this one of the easier great festivals to reach—and still one of the least crowded by international travelers, who mostly know this town in cherry-blossom season only. The autumn version is louder, rougher, and, some say, truer.