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 with every night, first-class rail, transfers and more than twenty meals included. 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 first-class rail between the cities, the Shinkansen in first class with your luggage sent ahead, and by private car and driver within them, with a Tour Director making every reservation and every conversation on the ground in Japanese.

Japan is safe and easy to travel independently, but much of what makes a journey here exceptional is arranged in Japanese: the teahouse evening, the garden opened by application, the table at a kaiseki restaurant of two Michelin stars. A Tour Director travels with every one of our tours and journeys and handles all of it on your behalf.

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 suite with its own onsen terrace beneath Mount Fuji, 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 old 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.