What will this trip be like?

Think of this as an escorted tour rather than a guided tour

• We will do the underlying planning, pricing, and administrative tasks.


• The trip leaders are with you to provide guidance and assistance.


• We are trying hard to strike a balance between seeing and doing lots, with maintaining a realistic pace so the trip is enjoyable, not exhausting


• We will get you to the cities on our itinerary


• We will suggest places to go and things to do, but ...


• We feel it's really important for each traveler to have the freedom to attend to their personal interests, to choose the activities that interest them


• Maybe you would rather go shopping than visit one more temple, museum, or other site


• We will always have a destination we want to see personally (note: we find we end up doing a fair amount of walking) - and if you choose to go where we go, that's fine

Getting around

• We don't use a single tour bus that takes us everywhere; rather we tend to use public transportation instead of group buses.


• Our style is to get out amongst the locals, rather than to sit in a gilded cage (tour bus) like you're watching fish in an aquarium. This approach takes more work but it is enormously more rewarding.


• So if you prefer the ease and comfort of a tour bus tour, this is not the trip for you.


• We'll show you how to get around, if you want to use public transportation (buses, subways, local trains, taxis) as well as a lot of walking. But you can opt out of any our site visits.

Several of you have been to Japan before and have your own agenda of places you want to go (maybe even old friends to meet). Feel free.

We will generally have at least one group meal in each city, and in many cases we may really want to hang out together, explore Japan together. We're up for that.

But overall you have freedom to go where you want and see what you want. After all, we're all free spirits!

In any case, we have these requirements of each traveler ...

• When we have scheduled travel times, you must be there on time: the trains / planes / busses won't wait for you - besides, it's rude to your fellow travelers to be late
• If you are having difficulties, we must know as soon as possible: we can't help you if we don't know there's a problem!