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.

Our published tours start from $18,500 per person, twin share, for eleven to thirteen days, at one inclusive price: every night, first-class rail, transfers, all breakfasts, and all other meals as detailed in the itinerary. The private journeys of The Private Collection start from $18,000 per person, twin share, and a Custom Tour of Japan from $3,500 per person, per day. An Expert Japan Itinerary, for those who travel independently, 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 a Tour Director beside you every day.

Japan is easy to travel independently, but much of what makes a journey here 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.