Luxury travel to Japan

Japan is divided into eight traditional regions, with Okinawa usually counted as a ninth for travel: Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kanto, Chubu, Kansai, Chugoku, Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa. Tohoku, Kanto, Chubu, Kansai and Chugoku together make up Honshu, the main island.

Kanto and Kansai: Tokyo, then Kyoto, Nara and Osaka, with Mount Fuji or Hakone between them. Most first journeys add an onsen town, such as Kinosaki in Kansai or Hakone in Kanto, and many add Kanazawa or Takayama in Chubu.

Ten days to two weeks for a first journey through Tokyo, Mount Fuji, Kyoto and Osaka at an easy pace. Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kyushu or Okinawa each deserve a week of their own.

Yes. Our tours and the journeys of The Private Collection follow set routes; the Custom Tour of Japan is created around your party alone, on your dates, and can go anywhere in the country, Okinawa included.

Each of our published tours runs eleven to thirteen days at one inclusive price per person, twin share, set out on the tour's own page: every night, first-class rail, transfers, all breakfasts, and all other meals as detailed in the itinerary. Each journey of The Private Collection carries its price on its own page, and a Custom Tour of Japan is from $3,500 per person, per day. An Expert Japan Itinerary, a journey planned to the day by us and travelled at your own pace, starts from $550.

By the Shinkansen in first class between the cities, with your luggage sent ahead to the next hotel on certain days, and by private car and driver where the day calls for one, with your own Tour Director.

Much of what makes a journey to Japan exceptional opens only by introduction: an evening with geiko and maiko in a Gion teahouse, a garden opened only by application, a table at a kaiseki restaurant of two Michelin stars. A Tour Director travels with every one of our tours and journeys and opens these doors for you.

Among those our journeys use: a hotel above the moat of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, a hotel a short walk from the teahouse lanes of Gion, a Relais & Châteaux ryokan at Kinosaki Onsen, a ryokan in a Japanese garden beneath Mount Fuji, each room with its own open-air bath with Fuji in view, and a ryokan at Noboribetsu where kaiseki is served in a private dining room. A Custom Tour reaches further, to a pavilion in a forest garden at the foot of Kyoto's northern hills, the family-kept ryokan of central Kyoto, a ryokan reached by its own boat above Arashiyama, the former summer villa of an imperial prince in Hakone and a ryokan of villas in the birch forest of Niseko.