The sound comes before the sight. Thousands of bells, each attached to a paper umbrella, producing a collective shimmer that fills the streets of central Tottori on the second Saturday of August. Shang, shang, shang — the festival's name is the sound of itself. The Shanshan Festival centers on the umbrella dance: performers moving through the city's main streets in coordinated waves, their bells sounding in rough unison. What strikes most observers is not the numbers but the texture of the sound. It fills space the way water fills a vessel, finding every corner. Tottori is Japan's least populated prefecture, a fact sometimes mentioned apologetically. But a city that produces this quantity of joyful noise on a summer night has nothing to apologize for. The sand dunes are to the north. The bells are downtown. Both are worth the journey, and the bells require staying one night longer than planned.