Questions

Four kinds, and we plan every one of them. Our published tours cross Honshu and Hokkaido on set dates, each limited to 8 guests, with our Tour Directors throughout. The Custom Tour of Japan is designed around your party alone and run by the team that designed it. The Private Collection is four private journeys, ready to travel on the dates you choose, with a Tour Director every day, priced twin share or for one travelling alone. The Expert Japan Itinerary is a written itinerary for those who arrange their own travel.

Four private journeys, ready to travel on the dates you choose, with a Tour Director every day. Essential Japan is nine days through Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, $18,000 per person twin share, or $28,800 travelling alone. Classic Japan is eleven days, adding two nights at Kinosaki, $22,000 per person twin share, or $35,200 travelling alone. Definitive Japan is thirteen days, adding Lake Kawaguchi beneath Mount Fuji, $26,000 per person twin share, or $41,600 travelling alone. Pure Hokkaido is nine days from Hakodate to Sapporo, $21,600 per person twin share, or $34,600 travelling alone. Each journey may also be taken at a higher hotel level, with the most celebrated hotels of Tokyo and Kyoto on Honshu, from $24,300 per person twin share according to the journey. Essential Japan and Classic Japan may be extended by three days to Hiroshima and Miyajima for $6,000 per person twin share, or $9,600 travelling alone. Each journey is taken as designed, and each is booked by enquiry: tell us your dates, and we reply personally. A journey shaped around you from the first conversation is the Custom Tour of Japan.

That depends on the Japan you are looking for: cherry blossom in spring, the cool of Hokkaido in summer, the maples turning through autumn. Inspiration sets out each season and mood, and the availability calendar shows what runs when. If you would rather talk it through, a call with our team is the surest way to find your journey. And if none of the published tours is quite right, the Custom Tour of Japan is built around you alone.

Limited to 8 guests, a truly small group tour: a party of this size sits comfortably in the ryokan, gathers around one table for dinner, and moves through Japan without ever feeling like a group.

Guests of eighteen and over, travelling twin share, usually a couple, sometimes two friends. A family is welcome where every traveller is eighteen or over, each pair in a room of their own. There are no solo places and no single supplements on a published tour. A guest travelling alone, or a couple who would rather travel privately, takes one of the four journeys of The Private Collection: ready to travel on your own dates, with a Tour Director every day, priced twin share or for one travelling alone.

On the Custom Tour of Japan, yes: a whole family is welcome, and the rooms, the days and each traveller's rate are agreed with us when the tour is designed. A ryokan may take a family in one room where the property allows it. The published tours are for guests of eighteen and over. We advise you plainly on each property when we design your tour. An Expert Japan Itinerary can be written around children too, down to the places and activities they will love.

We do. Your Tour Directors travel with you from the welcome evening to the final departure, and behind them stands our team in Kyoto. The route, the rooms and the days are ours from the first plan to the final evening.

The Custom Tour is a journey we design for your party alone and then run, with a Tour Director throughout. The Expert Japan Itinerary is a written document: our planning expertise applied to a journey you book and travel independently.

Enquire through the form and we reply personally. If you would like to talk the journey through first, a call with your Tour Director is available, booked from a live calendar that shows open times in your own time zone. A deposit of $3,500 per person secures your place, and the balance falls due 95 days before departure. Dates and places for every departure are on the availability calendar.

Each tour carries a single all-inclusive price, from $18,500 to $21,500 per person, twin share, according to the tour: every night, first-class rail and private vehicles, your Tour Director throughout, and the greater share of your dining. What is and is not included is set out in full on each tour page and in our Booking Conditions.

By card or by bank transfer, directly to Luxury Japan Travel. Every price is all-inclusive and tax inclusive: a deposit confirms your place, and the balance is due 95 days before departure.

Yes. Every payment is safe, secure and encrypted. Your card details are held by Stripe, to the highest security standard in the card industry (PCI DSS Level 1), and a bank transfer goes directly to Luxury Japan Travel. Our bank details come to you only from us, with your invoice; should details ever arrive that differ, telephone us first. Any question about a payment is answered at accounts@luxuryjapantravel.com.

Tipping is not customary in Japan. In restaurants and hotels the service is in the bill. A gratuity for the Tour Directors at the end is standard practice and welcomed.

Each published tour runs on one set of dates and is limited to 8 guests, and a deposit of $3,500 per person secures a place. The availability calendar shows every open date.

No: you arrange your own flights, and we take care of everything from the moment you land. We do not book flights, and we do advise: routings, timings, and which flight lands you in time for the welcome evening. Comprehensive travel insurance is a condition of booking.

In our Booking Conditions, set out plainly before any payment is made. You book directly with Luxury Japan Travel and you travel with Luxury Japan Travel.

With the Journey, our set of questions about the tour you have in mind. Your answers shape a private call with our team, and after the call a curation fee of $1,500, credited in full to your tour, sets the design in motion.

Per person, per day, and the rate turns on the size of your party: two guests from $3,500, three to four guests from $2,750, five or more from $2,000. One figure, agreed in full before you travel. We tell you plainly what your figure buys.

A tour designed for your party alone and run by the team that designed it. Ours is the Custom Tour of Japan: suites at the leading hotels and ryokan of Japan, each chosen personally by us, a private car and driver every day, helicopter or private aircraft between regions, Michelin-starred dining, and your own Tour Director from arrival to departure. It runs from five nights, on the dates you choose, and nobody else is on it. Travelling alone, or as a couple who prefer a journey ready made to one shaped from scratch, is just as private: The Private Collection is four such journeys, from $18,000 per person twin share, or from $28,800 travelling alone.

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. We ask for the top suite or villa where it is worth the difference and the better room where it is not, and we know the properties that outperform their better-known neighbours.

Yes, every day, waiting wherever you are. Between cities you travel in the Green Car of the shinkansen with your luggage sent ahead, or by helicopter or private aircraft where the hours matter. You never queue and never carry anything.

Yes. A helicopter over the mountains to a ryokan, a private aircraft between regions, and a private yacht between the art islands of the Inland Sea are each bookable as part of the tour, and each is quoted in your proposal before you commit to anything.

Yes. Tokyo has more Michelin-starred restaurants than any city in the world, and the top tables are yours: a private room, a whole counter taken for your party, or a chef who comes to your ryokan. Kyoto's kaiseki restaurants, a sake brewery in Nada and a whisky distillery between Kyoto and Osaka are arranged the same way.

Yes. A temple in Kyoto opened for your party after hours, an evening with geiko in a teahouse that receives guests by introduction, a private tea ceremony with a master, an afternoon at the bench of a lacquer or knife maker. We arrange each in person, and each is written into your proposal.

Five nights, with no upper limit, beginning on the date you choose. A solo traveller is welcome: tell us, and we will quote for your tour. If you would rather a journey already made, ready to travel on your own dates, The Private Collection welcomes a solo traveller, from $28,800.

$550 for journeys of up to ten days and $825 for eleven to fifteen days, tax inclusive. You receive a complete written itinerary within seven working days, planned by the team that runs our tours, with one round of revisions included.

No. The itinerary is yours: you make each booking yourself, with our document in hand. Those who wish us to arrange and run the journey choose the Custom Tour instead.

The properties are named on each tour page, so you can see the standard we work to. The complete detail of your journey follows your enquiry.

When you enquire. Each tour page gives the shape of the journey, and the complete itinerary, day by day, arrives with our reply.

Gentle by design. Mornings are slow, evenings are yours, and time to rest is part of the route. You are travelling to spend time in Japan, not to race through it.

The pace is gentle: slow mornings and relaxation built into the route. Japan does ask for time on your feet, in gardens, temple precincts, and old town streets. If you have any doubt about pace or mobility, tell us when you enquire and we will advise you honestly. The Custom Tour of Japan accommodates every level of fitness and mobility: it is designed entirely around you.

No. Your Tour Director is fluent in English and Japanese, and everything on the ground, the ryokan, the kitchen, the driver, is handled in Japanese on our side. You never order, negotiate, or explain anything. You are simply the guest.

With notice, yes. Tell us before you travel, and every kitchen on the route composes your courses around you.