Private tours of Japan, with Luxury Japan Travel, are made one at a time. A Custom Tour of Japan is designed for one party, on its own dates, with its own Tour Director, along a route planned for that party alone, and it begins with a single question: what draws them to Japan. The answer becomes the itinerary.
the tour
What is arranged
Everything on the ground is arranged by Luxury Japan Travel, which plans, organises and runs every tour. The rooms come first, and for each night the search begins with the best room the property has. The choice runs from a machiya in Kyoto with a maple in its courtyard to a suite high above Otemachi, or a suite in Hakone at a ryokan made from the summer villa of the imperial Kan'in family. A private car and driver wait wherever the party is, every day. Between cities the party travels first class, with the luggage sent ahead, and when the view matters more than the hour there is a helicopter over the mountains or a yacht across the Inland Sea.
In Kyoto the choice runs on to a retreat upstream of Arashiyama, which guests reach by boat on the Oi river, and to a hotel opened in 2024 in the east of the city near Sanjusangen-do. In Niseko it is fifteen villas in the birch woods of Hanazono, each with two onsen (hot-spring baths) of its own, one indoors and one open to the snow. On the island of Naoshima in the Inland Sea, the guest sleeps inside the museum itself, among the works, after the day's visitors have left.
Some meals are arranged, from kaiseki in a private room upstairs, the courses arriving one at a time, to the whole counter at a sushi restaurant taken for the party. Other evenings are left free, with a suggestion from the Tour Director for each.
The days are made from what the party loves: lunch at a sumo stable, eating the chanko nabe the wrestlers eat themselves, or an afternoon in the sake breweries of Nada in Kobe, which brew with water from the Miyamizu spring. Another party walks for three hours on the Nakasendo, the old post road through the cedar forest of the Kiso valley, with the luggage gone ahead and lunch waiting in Tsumago, or a morning in Uji with a tea master, among the fields where the leaf for matcha is grown in the shade.
Some of it is arranged for the party alone: a temple in Kyoto after its gates have closed, with the garden lit and geiko dancing in it; a private rotenburo, an open-air onsen, in the hills; an afternoon with a kintsugi restorer, mending a broken bowl with lacquer and gold; a chef brought to the ryokan to cook for one evening; a table at a restaurant of three Michelin stars, or the whole counter. Anything that can be done in Japan can be arranged, and each arrangement is set out in the proposal.
the tour director
The Tour Director
The Tour Director is a senior member of the team in Kyoto, fluent in English and Japanese, who works with the party and with the company's Japan specialists to shape the tour and then travels it with them from the first day to the last. The ryokan, the kitchen and the driver are all spoken to in Japanese, so the party never has to ask for anything. The Tour Director is beside the guests when they want company and out of sight when they do not.
the party
Who travels this way
A Custom Tour of Japan is for a couple, a family across three generations, a group of friends, or a guest travelling alone, and there is no limit to the size of the party. Children travel on the Custom Tour, and the rooms and the pace are planned around them from the first conversation. The tour is built for every level of fitness and mobility.
the price
What it costs, and how it begins
The price is from $3,500 per person, per day. The shortest Custom Tour is five nights.
It begins with the Journey form, which asks who is travelling, when, and what draws them to Japan. A video call with the team in Kyoto follows, and a journey curation fee of $1,500, credited in full against the tour, begins the design. The party sees the whole itinerary, every property and every day, and refines it until nothing needs changing. A deposit stated in the proposal confirms the dates, and the balance is due 95 days before travel.
the private collection
A private journey already written
A private tour need not be designed from the beginning. The Private Collection is four journeys already written, travelled privately on the dates a guest chooses, with a Tour Director every day and the same care in the rooms and at the table: Essential Japan through Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka; Classic Japan, which adds Kinosaki; Definitive Japan, which adds two nights beneath Mount Fuji; and Pure Hokkaido, from Hakodate to Sapporo. Each is taken as it is written.
the itinerary
A route to travel independently
For a guest who wants the route planned by Luxury Japan Travel but would rather travel independently, the Expert Japan Itinerary is a written itinerary, delivered in seven working days, from $550, with one revision included.
The Expert Japan Itinerary, for independent travel →
For a party that wants Japan shaped entirely around it, Luxury Japan Travel's Custom Tour of Japan is the private tour in its fullest form: from five nights, on the dates the party chooses, with a private car and driver every day and its own Tour Director from the first day to the last. The route, the rooms and the days all grow from the first question the Journey form asks, what draws the party to Japan.