Incredible journey to a country full of incredible people!
Japan
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Mar 2 - Mar 15, 2026
We had an amazing time. I appreciate that you were able to squeeze so many activities in for us because we are busy bodies. It was nice having the assistance of drivers and tour guides for the personal touches they offered. Especially loved Yukiko Yoshida, our guide in Kyoto. She was incredible! She had great energy to her, was incredibly knowledgeable, gave us really cool history lessons and context to understand better everything we saw. The food tours were also great because they helped us acquaint ourselves with the cities in a casual way. We enjoyed the ramen class but we felt it took too much of our time in retrospect, so we will likely not do cooking classes again in the future unless we don’t know what else to do. The kendo class was silly fun but we thoroughly enjoyed it, and it was a fun contrast to the formality of the tea ceremony! Of course skiing in Nagano was incredible and getting to see the snow monkeys while it was snowing was magical. We can’t wait to come back and explore more of the beautiful and dynamic country!
Hotel Reviews
Beautiful, clean modern, it was a sophisticated way to spend our first nights in Japan. Conveniently located, made it easy to walk from there or take public transportation.
Comfortable hotel but it does show its age a bit. The staff was wonderful and the facilities were easy to navigate. Ski in/ski out was awesome though! The rental shop is smaller than big resort shops so be patient. I unfortunately had to wear ski boots that were half a size too big
Our experience at this hotel was one of the most pleasant on the trip. It was very private, very peaceful, very magical. Our meals here were some of the best we had on the trip, having a private on sun was incredible and suited our comfort level with public nudity haha. We felt very taken care of here and wished more places were like this!
Activity Reviews
Our tour guide on this trip was incredible. She was super informative, was great about giving us lots of background information, and kept us moving so that we didn’t miss out on anything.
We had a lot of delicious food, but most importantly it was a really nice primer for the area
We had so much fun, getting dressed up in traditional garments and learning about the tea ceremony. Everyone got an opportunity to take pictures in the Japanese garden in our fineries, and it was very pleasant.
How can you not have fun learning how to wheel a sword?! Playful, short and sweet, though I wish we had time to spar or something.
It was a fun experience to learn how the broth and Ramen are made, but in retrospect I think what I was really hoping to make was more of an udon noodle. We appreciate it, however that the techniques we are in there are very easily reproducible at home, especially because we already have a noodle adapter for our KitchenAid.
