Review

We really liked the combination of National Parks / hiking in nature, and small cities. We added an extra day in Nagano, which we were happy for. We rather wished we had added extra days in Matsumoto and Kanazawa, but at least we got a short day in each. We added 4 days in Kyoto—just of part of the Kyoto self-guided tour. We also added a few days in Tokyo at the trip\'s end. We liked the flexibility—we could choose the standard itineraries, but still make small changes to them. We appreciated the suggestions for activities at each location we visited—it gave us good ideas for structuring our days. We combined this itinerary with Hokkaido self-guided tour.

Modern Japanese-style hotels were excellent, but we also liked being able to experience traditional ryokans on this part of the trip.

Breakfast (and sometimes dinner) buffets in the hotels were excellent, as were fixed-meal breakfasts and dinners in the ryokans.

We were very pleased with the 3 guides we have on the tour: Toshi took around to interesting locations in Tokyo (Aug 29); Etsuko helped us to buy remaining train tickets and accompanied us to the airport for flight to Hokkaido (Aug 30); Keiko took around to interesting locations in Kyoto (Sept 27). All three guides were friendly and really helped us to better understand Japan and its culture.

Detailed itinerary was great.

We liked the organization of the self-guided tour.

Public transportation in Japan is amazing! We really enjoyed traveling on Shinkansens, but the regular trains and buses were also very efficient. It\'s such a pleasure to be free of driving a car and just relax while someone else does the driving.