Review

Excellent. It was a very good ‘taster’ trip which covered a lot of places and experiences in a short time.

I enjoyed all the hotels especially the Japanese style. I liked experiencing one night at a Buddhist temple as well.

Buffet breakfasts were excellent everywhere. The Japanese meal at Hakone was amazing.

Our guide Toshi gave us an excellent introduction to the transport system, overview of Japanese history, and Japanese etiquette at temples, shrines and meals. We felt much more confident to begin our journey after our day with him.

The pre- tour information allowed us to do our own research on You Tube etc to prepare ourselves. The very detailed tour instructions looked rather daunting at first but made perfect sense once we were on our way. They were very easy to follow. The only time we got ‘lost’ was going out of the train station at Osaka when the suggested exit 6 was temporarily closed and we took another exit and needed Google maps to find the hotel. We had a similar problem at Kyoto station where we probably read the signs wrongly but came out on the wrong side of the station. Google maps also came to the rescue after a bit of wandering around!

Great. Everything was very well thought out and came together as was planned.

The Japanese public transport system is amazing and very efficient. The JR pass allowed us to make the pre reservations and was also useful in some other places. The Suica cards covered the rest.