The bride is real. That is the first thing to understand about Itako's iris festival, held from late May to late June in the canal country where the Tone River frays into the marshes of southeastern Ibaraki. On Wednesdays and weekends during the festival, a woman in white bridal kimono is rowed down the old waterway in a hand-poled sappa boat toward her waiting groom — not an actress but an actual bride, chosen from applicants across Japan, marking her actual wedding. Until the 1950s this was simply how Itako married: the canals came closer to the door than the roads did. The town has kept the custom alive by lending it, each June, to couples who want to begin this way, cheered by strangers lining the banks.

Around them bloom the festival's other stars: a million iris plants of some five hundred varieties in Suigo Itako Ayame Park, staggered from early to late bloomers so that the show runs a full month, peaking around June 10 in drifts of white, violet, and yellow along the water. Rowed sightseeing boats work the canals all day, and the park is lit after dusk.

The festival dates to 1952, and the park sits a short walk from Itako Station on the Kashima Line — or seventy minutes from Tokyo Station by highway bus toward Kashima. It falls, deliberately, in the rainy season; irises are one of the few flowers that look better wet. Bring an umbrella and no hurry.