Reviews

Great itinerary with lots of interesting locations to visit and things to experience. Quite excellent range of Japanese and International cuisine offered, all of which was to a very high standard. Very comfortable coach and rail travel. An exceptional guide made the holiday. This is interesting, safe carefree travel at its best.

Great itinerary, good hotels, food, guides and transport .

Very good holiday. Well organised, guides helpful and friendly and we travelled with a lovely group of people. We covered most important sights in the guidebook and we were lucky to see 2 troupes of snow monkeys.
The food experience was good and we tried a good cross section of Japanese cuisine and I learnt a lot. The breakfasts were western or Japanese from the buffet and the other meals included Italian and other more western food. I think the food was done really well and we visited some excellent restaurants.
We experienced sushi making and Washi paper making as well as a tea ceremony.
You need to be fit and active for this trip as many early starts and lots of walking on uneven ground, up hills and steps. There was a boat trip in Tokyo bay with karaoke (plenty of booze to reduce your inhibitions if you chose to drink it)
We experienced the Shinkassen on the leg to Hiroshima. Everywhere we went was worth the visit.
My only real issues were being dropped at the airport on the way home one and a half hours before the terminal building opened so waited in the cold. Also the change over for the connecting flight at Tokyo meant that it was only with serious queue jumping and the tolerance of fellow passengers we were able to catch our connecting flight due to poor connectivity between Tokyo airport's terminals.
I would recommend this trip

I've not been on my trip yet so this is a bit early to give a review but I found the website easy to use and it had all the details I wanted to see: the temperature, the rainfall and full details of the trips and how it works. I've paid the deposit and had an acknowledgement sent to be straight away. It is ATOL protected, so I feel like I'm in safe hands.

I'm really looking forward to my trip in November.

informative, pleasurable and efficient

The website was very easy to use and was detailed and informative, making all necessary details readily accessible. I chose to make the booking by telephone. The person we spoke to was knowledgeable and helpful.

Thorough, friendly and thoughtful service. Options discussed clearly, with alternative choices as well.

Helpful and friendly staff, with good knowledge

overall lovely holiday and tour of Japan and I would use company again.
three main issues -
the tour size group was 28 in my view far too many for one tour guide despite the guide's best efforts.
she was outstanding
most of the hotels were outstanding but a couple were cramped and and some it was just impossible to get breakfast as the dining areas were just far too small compared to the number of people needing to come to breakfast
thirdly some of the restaurants chosen for the evening meal were not good while others outstanding.

this was not a cheap trip and my expectations were for a much more consistent standards in hotels restaurants and meals.
it did not seem the company was skimping more rather some poor choices