1.866.316.7268 [email protected]
WPCS 2.1.3
1.866.316.7268 [email protected]
WPCS 2.1.3

Review

Chris Bartlam

Best of Japan in 22 Days
Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback on your touring experience with us! We appreciate your kind words and are so glad you had a good time. We hope to see you in Japan again! ~ Samurai Tours Staff
Itinerary
While the itinerary was excellent overall it suffered from just another temple/shrine syndrome and the high pace left too little time at other more interesting locations. i feel that some of the less impressive temples could be cut to allow more time in more interesting places. For example i feel like Ishite-ji could have been bypassed to allow more time on Miyajima Island perhaps an earlier ferry cruise. And our guide canned Hakodate Morning market for us because no one was interested.Additionally i liked the idea of more optional side tours. Other of the members of our group organised a tour of Akihabara and graciously allowed me to tag along with them and it was in the top 5 highlights for my trip. Also our guide was persuaded to take us through Hell Valley in Noboribetsu onsen and that was another highlight.
Lodging
The accommodation while feeling a bit rundown in some places was over all excellent for what we needed it for i felt like the only time i was in the rooms was for sleeping. Ryoso Kawaguchi at Myajima Island was especially good.
Food
Guides
All of the guides were very good, I liked Kay in Tokyo & Hakone the most, and Mac in Takamatsu was very well organised especially his help with suggesting the use of our free time there. Unfortunately i have forgotten the name of the person who handled our first transfer in Nagoya but she was very kind and her outstanding help had our transfer sorted out with a minimum of fuss and bother. But i felt that we were babied a bit too much towards the end of the tour perhaps a bit more communication between the guides especially on the competence of the group would go a long way.
Pre-Tour Handbook
Sarah and Stephanie were very helpful in sorting out the changes of dates and extra day for me.i think it would be good if there was a choice of formats for the tour handbook, i was emailed a PDF and ran it through a converter for a .mobi format so i could load it on my kindle but this caused some layout issues in the appendices
Tour Organization
Tour Transportation

Would you go on another tour operating by Samurai Tours: Yes!

Would you recommend Samurai Tours to friends or family: Yes!