Accessible travel in Japan
The best of Japan is open to every traveller who wishes to see it.
Japan is far kinder to travellers with disabilities than most people expect. Its cities are built with lifts and level entrances, its great hotels keep rooms designed for a wheelchair, and the shinkansen carries wheelchair spaces. Its oldest places ask for more care, and that is where a private journey, created around you, makes all the difference.
our promise
Nobody is turned away from Japan
We plan, organise and run every tour. Nothing on your journey belongs to someone else's programme, so there is nothing fixed that you must fit. Every journey we create is private and made for one party from the first line. The Custom Tour of Japan accommodates every level of fitness and mobility.
You come for the same evenings, the same gardens and the same tables as every guest we look after, at the pace that suits you. Tell us whatever helps each of you travel well, and the journey is designed around it from the beginning, so that when you read it, it reads like any great journey through Japan, because that is exactly what it is.
for every traveller
A journey shaped around you
Wheelchair users
Rooms on one level with space to turn, a car with a ramp or a lift at every door, and the shinkansen between cities, with a ramp brought to the carriage door as you board and as you arrive.
Seniors and older parents
Slow mornings, a car that waits at every door, luggage sent ahead to the next hotel, and three generations at one table for a kaiseki dinner served course by course.
Limited mobility
Days measured by how far you like to walk and no further: gardens and temple halls with level paths, somewhere to sit wherever a view deserves it, and the car close by when the day has been full enough.
Blind and low vision travellers
Japan reaches every sense: incense drifting through a temple hall, the weight of a hand-thrown tea bowl, the scent of hinoki in your room, each piece of sushi set before you in turn. Your Tour Director describes every garden as you walk it and reads every menu.
Deaf and hard of hearing travellers
So much of Japan is seen: a garden composed like a painting, a kaiseki course arranged as carefully as it is cooked, the turn of a maiko's fan. Tell us how you prefer to communicate, and every day follows that way, with each day's plan written out for you.
Autistic and neurodivergent travellers
Some of the calmest places on earth are in Japan. Quiet routes, gardens chosen for their stillness, a private dining room in place of a busy counter, rooms chosen for their calm, and the next day's plan in your hands the evening before.
Japan, at ease
What Japan makes possible
The great hotels of Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Kanazawa and Hiroshima, and those around Mount Fuji, keep rooms built for a wheelchair, and many offer rooms side by side for a family, beds at the height you prefer and a private room for dinner. Cars and vans with a ramp or a lift carry a chair from the airport to the gate of a garden, and between cities the shinkansen carries wheelchair spaces, with station staff at the carriage door.
The oldest places ask for more thought: temple precincts of gravel and stone steps, the raised floors of a ryokan. Where a place is reached only by stairs, there is almost always another as beautiful that is not. Tea can be prepared for you in ryurei, the tea ceremony at a table, first presented in Kyoto in 1872 so that guests could take tea seated in chairs.
where you stay
Rooms chosen for the way you travel
You stay in the finest luxury hotels and ryokan in Japan, each one chosen personally by us for its luxury, its comfort and its setting.
On your journey, each room is also chosen for the way your party travels. Among them, where it suits you, is one of the rarest rooms in Japan: a suite on one level with its own onsen.
one of our own
Your Tour Director
Your Tour Director takes care of every arrangement and knows the small things that make a day easy: the gate where the car comes closest, the level path through the garden, the quieter table, the menu read aloud.
questions
Accessible travel in Japan, answered
Is Japan disability friendly?
For most of a journey, yes, and more than many travellers expect. Its cities are built with lifts and level entrances, its leading hotels keep rooms designed for a wheelchair, and the shinkansen carries wheelchair spaces. The oldest temples, gardens and ryokan ask for more planning, and on a private journey every day is planned around you.
Are there Japan tours for disabled travellers?
Yes. The Custom Tour of Japan accommodates every level of fitness and mobility. Every journey is private and created around your party, so whatever helps each of you travel well is part of it from the first line.
What is accessible travel?
Travel shaped so that everyone can take part fully: the rooms, the car, the route, the pace and the way each day is explained, all suited to the person travelling. With us it means the best of Japan, created around you.
Can our whole family travel together?
Yes. A private journey is made for one party of any size, so a traveller who uses a wheelchair, a parent who walks slowly and the grandchildren all travel together, with rooms side by side where the hotel allows.
What is a Tour Director?
The most sought-after doors in Japan, and its most exclusive places, open only from within. Your Tour Director opens them: one of our own, fluent in English and Japanese. They enhance every day, turning a beautiful journey into a deep and authentic experience of Japan.
begin
Begin your journey
Tell us who is travelling, what you would love to see, and anything that helps us plan for you. The Custom Tour of Japan begins with the Journey form and continues on a call with our team, and everyone travelling is welcome to join it.