The best luxury tours of Japan have four things in common. The same person is beside the guest from the first evening to the last; the group is small enough to sit together at one counter; the route follows the season; and every hotel is named on the page. Each shows on a tour page before anything is booked, and each is how Luxury Japan Travel builds its six published tours.
the tour director
One Tour Director, the whole way
The question worth asking of any tour is who will be at the table on the ninth evening. On a Luxury Japan Travel tour it is the Tour Director who met the group on the first evening, fluent in English and Japanese, travelling every mile of the route with them. The ryokan, the kitchen and the driver are spoken to in Japanese, so the guest never has to ask for anything, and a change to the day is made before anyone needs to hear about it. Luxury Japan Travel plans, organises and runs every tour, and the Tour Director is the part of that the guest sees.
The arrangements beneath the Tour Director are worth testing too. A private chauffeur meets the flight and takes the luggage. Between cities the group travels in first class on the shinkansen, two wide seats either side of the aisle, and on certain days the cases go ahead by road to the next hotel, so the guests board with nothing heavier than a coat. The mornings are slow.
the group
A group that fits at one counter
A group that never exceeds eight, a small number of couples, sits together at a sushi counter, fills a teahouse room in Gion without crowding it, and moves through a temple garden at the pace of a conversation.
Both cherry blossom tours of 2027, in Japan and in Hokkaido, are guaranteed departures that run from two guests. A whole departure may also be taken by one party, a family or a circle of friends, with the route, the hotels and the Tour Directors unchanged.
the hotels
Every hotel, by name
Hotels named on a tour page are hotels a guest can look up, and the best tours name every one of them. The Classic Cherry Blossom Tour of Japan names every night on its page: three in Tokyo in a hotel within a hotel, with its own lounge and its own concierge, three in Kyoto a few minutes on foot from the lanes of Higashiyama, and two at a ryokan in Kinosaki Onsen, where guests walk in yukata between the town's seven public onsen. The meals are named by what they are, a spring kaiseki course by course, a sushi counter, a picnic under the trees, so the guest knows before booking where each evening is spent.
Reviews are the last test, and the ones worth reading are in the guests' own words.
From the initial call, every part of the trip has been incredible.
Toni L.
the season
A route that follows the season
The cherry blossoms and the maples move through Japan over several weeks, and the best routes are built to move with them. The Classic Cherry Blossom Tour of Japan runs from Tokyo to Mount Fuji and Kyoto and on to the Japan Sea, in the order in which the blossom moves. The Cherry Blossom Tour of Hokkaido travels south to north, from the landfall of the blossom at Matsumae and Hakodate to the gardens of Sapporo, which flower last. The Autumn Leaves Tour of Northern Japan follows the colour from the mountain valley of Jozankei above Sapporo down to the gas-lit valley of Ginzan Onsen in Yamagata.
inclusions
What a published tour includes
Every published tour includes every night in the hotels and ryokan named on its page, first-class rail and private cars, the airport chauffeur in each direction, and every activity and every entrance on the itinerary, with all breakfasts and all other meals as detailed in the itinerary. International flights are the guest's own, with advice on the routing from Luxury Japan Travel.
the tours
The six published tours
All six have a 2027 departure. The Cherry Blossom Tour of Hokkaido runs for thirteen days, from 28 April to 10 May 2027. The Summer Tour of Hokkaido, twelve days in the cool of the northern summer, departs on 25 June and again on 11 July 2027. The Wild North Tour of Hokkaido runs from 27 July to 6 August 2027, eleven days from the Daisetsuzan mountains to the Shiretoko coast. The Autumn Leaves Tour of Northern Japan runs from 2 to 13 November 2027, and the Autumn Leaves Tour of Japan from 23 November to 4 December 2027; the 2026 departure of each is sold out. The sixth, The Classic Cherry Blossom Tour of Japan, opens the year.
the private collection
Private journeys on a guest's own dates
Between the published tours and a tour made from nothing sits The Private Collection: four private journeys, already written, taken on the dates a guest chooses, with a Tour Director every day. Essential Japan is nine days through Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. Classic Japan adds two nights at Kinosaki, and Definitive Japan adds two more beneath Mount Fuji, over thirteen days. Pure Hokkaido is nine days from Hakodate to Sapporo, by Noboribetsu and Otaru. Two guests travel twin share, and a guest travelling alone is welcome.
the custom tour
When a published tour does not fit
Some journeys belong to no calendar: a family of three generations, a couple who want Kyoto in the quiet of January, a party who want the art islands of the Inland Sea. For them there is the Custom Tour of Japan, designed for one party, on its own dates, from five nights.
Luxury Japan tours: the 2027 departures →
the journey
The Classic Cherry Blossom Tour of Japan, 2027
All four marks meet on The Classic Cherry Blossom Tour of Japan, from 30 March to 10 April 2027. Twice it sits down for hanami, beneath the trees of Yoyogi Park in Tokyo and in the park of the Kyoto Imperial Palace, on rugs at the water's edge with a meal from a Michelin-starred kitchen and cold sake poured beside the guests. It gives two nights to Mount Fuji, in a suite with its own open-air onsen on the terrace and the mountain across the lake.
On the eighth evening a private teahouse room in Gion is set for the group, and geiko and maiko dance, pour and lead the old games of the ozashiki. The tour is limited to 8 guests, and its Tour Directors travel every mile of it beside them, from a Japanese garden in Tokyo to the willows of Kinosaki.