Japan

Tailor-Made Japan Holidays

Japan is a two week holiday. You can see it in less, but to do it justice you want the full fortnight: Tokyo's neon and order, Kyoto's temples and geisha districts, Osaka's street food, and the bullet train stitching it all together at 200 miles an hour. We build tailor-made, multi-centre Japan itineraries for UK travellers, with ten ready-made routes to start from and every one of them adjustable. Our clients booked more than 80 Japan holidays with us in the past year, and most of them planned ten to twelve months ahead. That is roughly double the lead time of any other destination we sell. Japan is worth the patience.

Most people book Japan once and try to do it all, which is exactly the right instinct. It is also why the planning matters more here than almost anywhere else.

Why book Japan with us

Anyone can string Japanese cities together online. What they cannot easily do is put them in an order where the trains flow naturally, the hotels sit in the right district of each city, and the whole thing has been tried and tested by someone accountable for it. That is the build. You travel on a Japan Rail Pass with the freedom to take whichever train suits you on the day, while your accommodation, touring and route are already settled.

There is one more difference our clients mention constantly: speed. Many Japan specialists take days to produce a quote, and some take up to three weeks. We aim to get yours out the same day you enquire.

The Golden Route: where every first Japan trip starts

Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka. The classic multi-centre route earns its reputation, and for first time visitors we almost always recommend it as the spine of the trip. It works as a progression: you land in Tokyo, the modern face of Japan, still easy to navigate and almost westernised in its convenience, and travel into something older. Kyoto is the ancient capital, all temples, geishas and quieter streets where less English is spoken. By the time you reach it you are already immersed in the culture and the food, and it lands harder for the contrast.

The route also works for a plainer reason: flight logistics. You fly into Tokyo and home from Osaka, so the journey never doubles back on itself. And it is a starting point rather than a limit. Our most popular Japan itinerary, Japan's Cultural and Culinary Wonders, pushes beyond the three cities into the Japanese Alps and the national park lakes precisely because the Golden Route alone is not the whole country.

Where to go in Japan

Tokyo

Three nights minimum, and the first is for recovering from the flight. We base most clients in Ginza, for the authentic side of Tokyo rather than the high rise hotel districts, and our number one property there is the Hotel Gracery Ginza. Families heading for the theme parks stay out at Tokyo Bay instead, close to the gates.

Kyoto

If any city on the route deserves more nights than you were planning to give it, it is this one. Kyoto is the cultural heart of Japan: the geisha districts, the bamboo groves of Arashiyama, and temple after temple without the crowds ever quite spoiling them. It is also the base for some of the best days out in the country, from the bowing deer of Nara to samurai castles. There is an argument for spending more time here than anywhere else in Japan.

Osaka

Osaka is the foodie city, closer in spirit to Singapore's hawker culture than to anywhere else in Japan: street food vendors, traditional dishes with a western flourish, whole districts built around eating. It usually closes the trip because the airport makes it the natural exit, and it works well as a final base for exploring the wider prefecture, including the ancient Shinto pilgrimage routes.

Hiroshima and Miyajima

Worth two nights, not a rushed day trip. The Peace Memorial matters, and it is not the whole story: Miyajima island is one of Japan's most sacred places, and its famous torii gate, rising straight out of the sea, is best experienced from the water. You can kayak beneath it. This is the most southerly point most Golden Route itineraries reach, which is exactly why it feels like a different Japan.

Hakone

Lake country, national park scenery, and the classic view of Mount Fuji. This is where we build in ryokan stays, traditional inns where the futon is laid out on tatami and dinner is an event. Everyone knows the image of cherry blossom framing Fuji, but Hakone is arguably at its best in autumn, when the foliage turns and the lakes go mirror still. It is quieter then too.

Beyond the route

Everything we build is tailor-made, and Japan is where that stops being a slogan and becomes the whole point. We have routed clients through Kanazawa and Takayama in the Japanese Alps, taken them to the snow monkeys in winter, and built Nikko into second time itineraries. One client wanted to visit a famous retired racehorse. It lived in Hokkaido. We found it, and we sorted the routing so they could get there.

Japan and the beach: finishing in Okinawa

Not many Japan trips end on a beach, but the ones that do follow a simple rule: sightseeing first, sand last. It is the same logic as Sri Lanka before the Maldives, or a safari before Mauritius. The travellers who add a beach leg tend to be second timers, empty nesters or honeymooners, people with three weeks rather than two and the budget to use them.

When they do, Okinawa is the answer as often as anywhere in Southeast Asia, and it is usually the better one. The flight from Tokyo or Osaka is domestic, so there is no new visa, no new currency and no new culture to reset into. Four to five nights on the main island is the sweet spot: long enough to justify the flight, with beach resorts and sightseeing of its own, and no ferries needed. You stay inside the same holiday instead of starting a second one.

The version we talk clients out of is the over-ambitious one. Adding Fiji means crossing the date line for astronomical flight costs. Routing the beach first, on a stopover, puts the relaxing part before the effort. Get to Japan, do Japan, then rest.

Japan with children: the theme park capital nobody books properly

Japan works for families once children are around six to eight or older: old enough for the distance, and old enough to appreciate somewhere genuinely unlike home. The mistake families make is pace. An itinerary that suits a couple, with a new city every two nights, exhausts a family. We slow it to three bases and build day trips instead, so everyone packs up twice rather than five times.

Then there are the parks. Tokyo Disney and Universal Studios Japan are run separately from the American and Paris parks, built for the Asian market, and they barely work with international operators at all. We are one of very few UK companies that can arrange tickets. Two things worth knowing before you go: DisneySea's technology and rides are ranked among the best of any park in the world, some of it not yet found in the American parks, and Super Nintendo World is a land inside Universal Studios Japan, not a separate park, so it needs no extra ticket. Allow three nights on Tokyo Bay to do both Disney parks properly, or five to combine parks and city.

No European operator can book the official Disney or Universal hotels in Japan, so we place families in well positioned hotels nearby with shuttles to the gates. Our Land of the Rising Fun itinerary, built around the parks, is priced from just under 2,800 pounds per person for a family of four with children under twelve, and it has quietly become one of our most booked Japan holidays.

Japan honeymoons

Japan honeymooners are usually first timers to Japan but not to Asia. They backpacked Thailand or Cambodia years ago, never made it here, and now have the budget and often a third week to do it properly. A honeymoon build upgrades the accommodation to four star minimum and swaps group touring for private guides. The most popular honeymoon shape we build is Japan with a three night Hong Kong stopover: for couples who have already done Singapore, Hong Kong has become the stopover that feels like an occasion.

And every honeymoon should include a ryokan night. Be warned about what that means: nine times out of ten it is a futon on the floor of a wooden inn, rustic and simple, in Hakone or Takayama where the setting does the work. Be warned, and book it anyway.

Getting around: the train country

Japan is built on trains, and the Japan Rail Pass remains the way to travel it. The network is signed in Japanese and English, the schedules live on an app, and the pass gives you something no fixed booking can: freedom. We plan every stop, every hotel and every tour, but we do not tell you to be on the 8am train. If you decide over breakfast to detour somewhere three hours away, the pass lets you.

At least one shinkansen journey is guaranteed on any route we build, and the classic run past Mount Fuji is the one everybody wants. As for driving: it is not a thing in Japan. Cars are expensive, private transfers cost a fortune, and the trains are simply better. We do not offer car hire there, on purpose.

The best time to visit Japan

Cherry blossom, from late March into April, is the most requested moment in the Japanese year and the most expensive. Book close to a year out; we secure everything the moment availability opens, because anyone arriving late to the window pays a premium for what remains. And go with your eyes open: the country is heaving.

Autumn is the insider's answer, and it is catching up fast. The fall foliage is every bit as stunning as the blossom, the crowds are thinner, and the route bends through the Japanese Alps to meet the colour. A lot of our autumn travellers are cherry blossom veterans coming back for the other half of the show.

Winter means skiing, at some of the best powder resorts anywhere, and it is prime snow monkey season. Summer is typhoon season, and it is also the cheapest time to go and the only window many families have; most of Japan's attractions are outdoors, so pack accordingly and you would be unlucky for it to spoil a trip.

The best value in the calendar sits between November and January. Autumn colour has finished, the blossom rush has not begun, the winter weather is often the clearest of the year, and while everyone else pays Christmas premiums elsewhere, Japan quietly does not charge them.

When they do, Okinawa is the answer as often as anywhere in Southeast Asia, and it is usually the better one. The flight from Tokyo or Osaka is domestic, so there is no new visa, no new currency and no new culture to reset into. Four to five nights on the main island is the sweet spot: long enough to justify the flight, with beach resorts and sightseeing of its own, and no ferries needed. You stay inside the same holiday instead of starting a second one.

The version we talk clients out of is the over-ambitious one. Adding Fiji means crossing the date line for astronomical flight costs. Routing the beach first, on a stopover, puts the relaxing part before the effort. Get to Japan, do Japan, then rest.