Japan Beyond the Golden Route

Book with only €100 deposit

What’s Included:

• Tokyo: Asakusa, Senso-ji & Shibuya Walking Tour: Discover the extraordinary duality of Tokyo on a guided walking tour through two of its most iconic and contrasting districts. Begin in ancient Asakusa — exploring the magnificent Senso-ji Temple complex, Japan’s oldest and most visited Buddhist temple, its towering Kaminarimon gate, its traditional Nakamise shopping street, and its extraordinary incense-filled courtyards — before crossing the city to experience the Shibuya Crossing at its most spectacular, the organised human torrent of one of the world’s busiest intersections flowing in every direction. Your expert guide brings the history, culture, and extraordinary humanity of Tokyo’s neighbourhoods to vivid life throughout.

• Tokyo: teamLab Planets TOKYO Digital Art Museum: Step inside one of the most extraordinary artistic experiences in the world at teamLab Planets in Toyosu — the most-visited single-artist museum on earth. Lose yourself in the fully immersive digital art environments: wade through a knee-deep pool of floating blooms, walk across a reflective infinity universe, and enter the garden of planets where vast digital flowers bloom overhead. An experience unlike anything else in travel, where the boundary between visitor and art dissolves entirely.

• Tokyo: Nikko UNESCO World Heritage Day Trip: Travel north by train to the extraordinary shrine and temple complex of Nikkō — a UNESCO World Heritage Site set deep in the forested mountains of Tochigi Prefecture. Visit the lavishly decorated Tōshō-gū Shrine — one of the most ornate religious structures in Japan, its gilded carvings, lacquerwork, and painted panels a Baroque excess of craft and devotion — and the serene Rinnō-ji temple complex, reflected in the still mountain waters of the Shinkyo Bridge.

• Kanazawa: Kenroku-en Garden, Kanazawa Castle, Samurai & Geisha District Walking Tour: Discover Japan’s most complete and historically preserved city on a guided walking tour through its extraordinary cultural districts. Visit Kenroku-en — one of the three great landscape gardens of Japan, its 25,000 square metres of stone lanterns, flowing streams, plum groves, and extraordinary seasonal flora representing 300 years of continuous refinement. Explore the reconstructed Kanazawa Castle, walk the atmospheric Nagamachi Samurai Quarter with its earthen walls and preserved samurai residences, and discover the Higashi Chaya Geisha District — Kanazawa’s best preserved and most atmospheric entertainment quarter, its lattice-windowed ochaya teahouses largely unchanged since the Edo period.

• Kanazawa: Shirakawa-go UNESCO World Heritage Morning Tour: Journey by coach into the extraordinary snow-country village of Shirakawa-go — a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the mountains between Kanazawa and Takayama, its extraordinary gassho-zukuri farmhouses with their immense steeply pitched thatched roofs rising from the valley floor like something from a fairy tale. With your guide explaining the extraordinary communal traditions and mountain wisdom built into every detail of these ancient structures, a morning in Shirakawa-go is one of the most visually extraordinary and culturally fascinating experiences in Japan.

• Takayama: Old Town Walking Tour & Sake Brewery Visit: Explore the extraordinary preserved merchant town of Takayama on a guided walk through its famous Sanmachi Suji historic district — three perfectly preserved Edo-period streets of sake breweries, miso shops, craft stores, and traditional machiya merchant houses. Enter a working sake brewery to learn how this most quintessentially Japanese of drinks is produced from local mountain spring water and Hida rice, and taste across the brewery’s finest expressions. A deeply unhurried and atmospheric half-day in one of the most beautifully preserved historic towns in all of Japan.

• Kyoto: Gion Night Walking Tour & Geisha Culture: Discover Kyoto’s most famous and mysterious neighbourhood after dark on a small-group guided walking tour through the atmospheric lanes of Gion. Your expert guide brings the extraordinary world of Kyoto’s geisha — the geiko and maiko who represent the highest refinement of traditional Japanese arts — to life through the stories, customs, and hidden details of the streets where they work. Pass the hanamachi teahouses, the Minamiza Kabuki Theatre, and the moonlit stones of Tatsumi Bridge, with the chance of glimpsing a geiko in full kimono hurrying to an evening engagement.

• Kyoto: Arashiyama, Fushimi Inari & Kinkaku-ji Full-Day Tour: Explore the full depth of Kyoto in a single extraordinary guided day. Begin at dawn at the Fushimi Inari Shrine — before the crowds arrive — walking the lower mountain path through the extraordinary tunnel of thousands of vermilion torii gates as the morning light floods between them. Continue to the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove and the elegant Tenryū-ji Zen garden, before ending at the magnificent Kinkaku-ji — the Golden Pavilion — its three floors of pure gold leaf reflected in the still waters of the Mirror Pond in one of the most iconic images in all of Japanese culture.

• Hiroshima: Peace Park, Atomic Bomb Dome & Museum Guided Tour: Visit one of the most profoundly moving sites in the world with a licensed expert guide. Walk through the Peace Memorial Park — its extraordinary monuments, the Paper Crane Memorial for Sadako Sasaki, and the Eternal Flame — and stand before the Atomic Bomb Dome, the skeletal ruins preserved exactly as they stood on 6 August 1945. Enter the Peace Memorial Museum for a guided tour that brings the full human story of the bombing — the individual lives, the extraordinary survival testimonies, and the remarkable post-war message of peace and reconciliation — to deeply moving, unforgettable life.

• Hiroshima: Miyajima Island & Itsukushima Shrine — Floating Torii Gate Boat Tour: Cross the bay to the sacred island of Miyajima — Shrine Island — on a short ferry from Hiroshima. Visit the extraordinary Itsukushima Shrine with its iconic torii gate rising from the tidal waters of the Seto Inland Sea — one of the most photographed and celebrated views in Japan — with your expert guide explaining the extraordinary 6th-century Shinto heritage and the remarkable tidal engineering that allows the shrine’s boardwalks to float above the sea at high tide. Walk the island’s forested mountain path to Daisho-in Temple, meet the famous tame deer, and take in the extraordinary panoramic views over the Seto Inland Sea.

• Osaka: Street Food & Dotonbori Evening Walking Tour: End the tour in the food capital of Japan — Osaka — on a guided evening street food walking tour through the extraordinary neon-lit lanes of Dotonbori and Namba. Sample takoyaki, okonomiyaki, kushikatsu, and fresh seafood from the legendary izakaya bars and street stalls that line the canal, guided by a local expert who knows exactly where the city’s finest and most authentic bites are found. A joyful, delicious, and deeply memorable final evening in a city that takes food more seriously than anywhere else in the world.

• Accommodation: Handpicked mix of 4 and 5-star hotels.

• Meals: Daily breakfasts at some hotels.

• Transport: High-speed trains throughout — Tokyo to Kanazawa, Kanazawa to Takayama, Takayama to Kyoto, Kyoto to Hiroshima, Hiroshima to Osaka.

OPTIONAL ACTIVITIES

• Tokyo: Mount Fuji & Hakone Day Trip – from €110

• Kanazawa: Samurai Swordsmanship Lesson at a Temple – from €45

• Kyoto: Traditional Kimono & Matcha Tea Ceremony – from €55

• Hiroshima: Historical Walking Tour — Why the Atomic Bomb Was Dropped – from €30

• Osaka: Osaka Castle & Ninja Experience – from €40

UPGRADES

• Hotels 5 star - price on request

• Private tours throughout — price on request

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