The Cherry Blossom Tour of Hokkaido 2027

The journey begins weeks before you fly. Your Tour Directors meet you on a private video call to introduce themselves, take you through the thirteen days, and hear what you are most looking forward to. A digital welcome pack follows, with packing guidance for the season, your arrival instructions, and reading for the flight. When you walk out of arrivals at Hakodate, you are already known and already expected.

The journey opens with three nights at Epuy, a resort on the shore of Lake Onuma, with Mount Komagatake reflected in the water. The first evening is a welcome French dinner. One day is spent at Matsumae, among two hundred and fifty kinds of cherry, with a hanami picnic beneath the castle wall. Another is spent in old Hakodate: the morning market, the old foreign quarter of Motomachi, the star-shaped fort of Goryokaku, and one of the three great night views of Japan.

Two nights at Hikari no Uta, a ryokan on the hillside above Lake Toya. A private boat takes you across the almost perfectly circular caldera, a ropeway carries you to the summit of Mount Usu, and at its foot stands Showa-Shinzan, the small red mountain that rose from a farmer's field in the 1940s. Dinner is French, with the lake below.

The way into Noboribetsu Onsen is an eight-kilometre avenue of Ezo-yamazakura, planted by the people of the town in the 1930s and grown into a single canopy. Two nights follow at Takinoya, where kaiseki is served to you in a private dining room on both evenings. You walk through Jigokudani, the Hell Valley, where the hot springs of the town rise, and sit with your feet in the warm river that runs down from the crater lake of Oyunuma. An afternoon is left free for the onsen of Takinoya, drawn from the springs that make Noboribetsu famous.

On the way to Lake Shikotsu you visit Upopoy, the national Ainu museum, with a private guide, and lunch there is inspired by Ainu cooking. Two nights follow at Mizu no Uta, in a suite with its own open-air onsen a few steps from the water. You dye cloth with indigo at an Ainu craft workshop, and one afternoon is left entirely to you.

The journey ends with three nights at the Sapporo Grand Hotel. A hanami picnic is laid at Moerenuma Park, the landscape designed by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, and you walk beneath the cherry and plum trees of Hokkaido Shrine. One evening is jingisukan, lamb grilled over charcoal, in Susukino. The last full day is spent on the coast: omakase sushi in Otaru, at a counter the Michelin Guide awarded a star in both of its Hokkaido editions, and a private whisky tasting at the Nikka distillery in Yoichi. The farewell dinner is tempura in Sapporo, at one of the great tempura counters of Japan, awarded two Michelin stars the last time the guide covered Hokkaido.