The rope is made entirely of wild wisteria vine — two ropes, in fact, male and female, each eighty meters long and two tons, woven by hand in a single day. This is the heart of the Hanayu Festival at Misasa Onsen in Tottori, held every May 3 and 4: a hot-spring town's thanksgiving for its waters, crowned by the Jinsho, a colossal tug-of-war designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property — the only major tug-of-war in Japan whose rope is woven of fuji-kazura vine, cut from the surrounding hills.

The weaving is the festival's first act: on the 3rd, townspeople work from morning to dusk braiding the vines, watched by anyone who cares to. On the night of the 4th, the ropes are carried booming through the lantern-lit spa street from east and west, joined at the center with a locking beam, and — when the great lantern overhead goes dark — pulled. East wins, good harvest; west wins, good business. Either way the town wins, which is the correct design for a festival. Visitors may grab on and pull, and merely touching the rope is said to confer a year's health. Fireworks close both nights.

Misasa itself is among the world's most radon-rich springs; the name means "third morning," for the belief that three mornings here cure what ails you. Twenty minutes by bus from Kurayoshi Station on the San'in line, it offers the rarest of Golden Week commodities: a genuine festival without the crush. Soak, pull, look up at the fireworks, sleep, repeat.