Review

The day to day itinerary with all of the specific information about how to find things which entrances to use and such was a great help

We asked for moderate priced but comfortable, mostly western style. All of the hotels met our expectations. They were clean, the rooms were perfectly suitable, they had TV's with English programing, and the staffs were most helpful and spoke some English. We appreciated the two traditional lodging experiences, at Hakone in a ryokan and at Koya-San in a monastery. Next time we go to Japan, we will do more traditional lodges.

The breakfasts were all quite suitable. The Shingawa Prince was outstanding for the variety, but all the others were fine. We enjoyed the special vegetarian meals at the monastery in Koya-San, and found many reasonable priced restaurants for lunch and dinner. The meals provided on our tours were excellent opportunities to experience Japanese food with a guide who could explain what we were eating.

We enjoyed all of our guides. We had official guides for Tokyo (Yoko) and for Kyoto (Kenji), and both were excellent. Very pleasant and sociable but also well-informed. The tours they provided gave us a good sense of how both cities were structured and how to get around them. We also used a volunteer guide in Kyoto to go to the Bamboo grove and poetry museum outside of Kyoto. This too was a most enjoyable day. It was a chance for us to interact more with resident of Kyoto rather than with a professional guide,and so the experiencing was a bit different, and we appreciated that opportunity.

All of the information was very helpful and since we downloaded it to a tablet we were able to consult it in Japan with ease.