Fuji in a dayMt Fuji and Hakone 1-Day Bus Tour Return by Bullet Trainfrom $163
RingsideSumo Show Experience with Chicken Hot Pot and a Photofrom $103
Kyoto, kneelingTea Ceremony in a Traditional Tea House in Kiyomizufrom $49
The floating gatePeaceful Hiroshima & Miyajima UNESCO 1 Day Bus Tourfrom $129
Thirteen dishesShinjuku Food Tour (13 Dishes at 4 Local Eateries)from $86
Half of Japan runs on a timed ticket. This is what to book first.
Which Fuji day trip actually sees the mountain. What a tea ceremony in Kyoto costs. Whether the sumo you can watch this week is a tournament or a morning practice in a stable. Reviews of every tour you can book in Japan.
Four days that hold a first Japanese trip together.
Tokyo, Kyoto, an art museum you cannot walk into on the day, and the loudest street food in Osaka. What each one costs and what the people who took it say.
01The first morning1-Day Tokyo Bus TourThe palace moat, Asakusa and the bay in one loop, with a guide doing the navigating while the jet lag wears off.
02Kyoto in one goPERFECT KYOTO 1-Day Bus TourKinkakuji, Fushimi Inari and the bamboo in a single coach day. Blunt, efficient, and the right call if Kyoto gets 48 hours.
03The dated ticketteamLab Planets TOKYO Digital Art Museum Entry TicketBarefoot through knee-deep water and a room of projected flowers. Entry is by slot and the good slots go weeks ahead.
04The Osaka nightHungry Osaka Street Food Tour:15 Tastings & 3 Drinks with a LocalFifteen tastings under the neon at Shinsekai and Dotonbori, ending somewhere you would never have opened the door of.
Tokyo to Hiroshima on one rail pass, in the order most people ride it.
Tokyo
Hakone
Kyoto
Nara
Osaka
HiroshimaThe tea room, the torii and the training hall, priced.
The oldest things in Japan are also the easiest to book badly. Four kinds of afternoon, what each one actually involves and the cheapest honest way into it.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · Tea Ceremony in a Traditional Tea House in Kiyomizu
Temples and shrinesKyoto’s big names, reached before the coaches do.
Tea ceremoniesForty minutes on tatami with a host who explains the order.
Gion after darkThe lanes between engagements, walked with someone who knows the etiquette.
Sword and shurikenKendo stances, armour you can wear, throwing stars you will miss with.
All 39 temple and shrine days →
Six Japanese bases, and the best day out from each.
Two capitals, old and new. The kitchen city between them, a mountain that decides its own visibility, a lake underneath it, and the island with the gate standing in the sea.
The Japanese days out more travellers take than any other.
Every Japanese tour we have reviewed →Coach runs to Fuji, a sumo hall, a food street after dark. These carry more bookings than anything else in the country, and the reasons are not always the obvious ones.
1
Mt Fuji and Hakone 1-Day Bus Tour Return by Bullet Train
This fast-paced Tokyo day trip combines Mt. Fuji’s 5th Station, a buffet lunch, the Hakone Ropeway, Lake Ashi cruise, and a Shinkansen return to Tokyo. English-speaking guides such as Sora, Hiro, Momo, and Levin keep the day moving, with multilingual audio support. Clear weather matters greatly.
From · $163
Read our review →
2
1-Day Tokyo Bus Tour
from $129
3
PERFECT KYOTO 1-Day Bus Tour
from $129
4
TOKYO SKYTREE® Admission ticket
from $13
5
teamLab Planets TOKYO Digital Art Museum Entry Ticket
from $25
6
Mt Fuji & Hakone Cruise, Drum Show Bullet Train 1 Day from Tokyo
from $149
7
Sumo Show Experience with Chicken Hot Pot and a Photo
from $103
8
Shinjuku Food Tour (13 Dishes at 4 Local Eateries)
from $86
Tokyo does not close. It moves indoors and downstairs.
Shinjuku alleys three feet wide, Shibuya basements with no sign on the street, standing bars where the first drink arrives with a small plate you did not order. A guide is the difference between looking at the doors and going through them.
Eating in Japan is the itinerary, not the interval.
Tsukiji at seven in the morning, a sushi counter you roll at yourself, a brewery that pours five sakes and explains the rice polish. Book the market walk early and the bar crawl late, and the rest of the day arranges itself.
Japan is cheaper than its reputation. Here is the ladder.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Japan has a reputation for being expensive that its temple gates, castle tickets and neighbourhood walks do not deserve.
Shrine and castle entry, neighbourhood walks, tea rooms, market mornings and the observation decks.
The full-day standards: Fuji and Hakone by coach, Hiroshima and Miyajima, sumo, the guided Kyoto loop.
- 11-Day Tokyo Bus Tourfrom $129
- 2PERFECT KYOTO 1-Day Bus Tourfrom $129
- 3Mt Fuji & Hakone Cruise, Drum Show Bullet Train 1 Day from Tokyofrom $149
Private guides with a car, kaiseki dinners, and the once-a-trip bookings that earn the money.
Three things that happen in Japan and nowhere else.
Temples and good food are everywhere. Six hundred years of wrestling ritual, a car park that turns into a motor show at midnight, and macaques who take the hot spring before you do are not.
Sumo, tournament or stable
A grand tournament runs fifteen days, six times a year, across four cities. Outside those windows the sport does not stop, it moves back into the stables, where wrestlers train from before dawn and a handful of visitors kneel at the edge of the ring to watch. Both are bookable. Only one of them is a stadium, and the stable morning is the one people talk about afterwards.
- 1Sumo Show Experience with Chicken Hot Pot and a Photo★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 6,678 reviews
- 2Sumo Show and Dining Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 2,742 reviews
- 3the SUMO show★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,960 reviews
The car meet on the expressway
Daikoku Futo is a parking area on a loop of elevated road in Tokyo Bay, and on the right night it fills with Skylines, rotaries and bosozoku bodywork under sodium light. Nothing is organised and nothing is advertised. Guided runs take you out in something worth arriving in, which is the part you cannot arrange from a hotel lobby.
- 1GT-R35 800hp Club Membership – secret underground car meet★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 998 reviews
- 2Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift 3 Experience (Kaila Yu SP)★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 947 reviews
- 3Daikoku JDM Car Meet & Night Car Culture Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 626 reviews
Macaques in the hot spring
In the Jigokudani valley a troop of Japanese macaques climbs down to a hot spring pool each winter and sits in it, steam rising off wet fur, entirely unbothered by the people on the bank. The walk in is a mile and a half through cedar forest. Most trips pair it with Zenkoji temple and a sake brewery in Nagano city, because the monkeys are worth the journey but not the whole day.
- 11-Day Snow Monkeys, Zenko-ji Temple & Sake in Nagano★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,020 reviews
- 2Snow Monkeys, Zenkoji Temple & Sake Day Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 833 reviews
- 3Snow Monkey 1 Day Tour with Beef Sukiyaki Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 295 reviews
Four Japanese tickets that are gone by the time you land.
Most of this country can be sorted from a convenience store at eleven at night. These four cannot. They run on release dates, dated passports and a tournament calendar that was set long before your flight was.
- 01Tokyo Studio Ghibli Museum and Ghibli Film Appreciation TourMuseum tickets are released on a fixed date each month for the month after, and the popular days go the same morning.
- 02teamLab Planets TOKYO Digital Art Museum Entry TicketEntry is by timed slot. Evening slots and blossom season sell out weeks ahead, and there is no standby queue.
- 03Sumo Show Experience with Chicken Hot Pot and a PhotoGrand tournaments run six times a year for fifteen days each. Miss the window and the only sumo on offer is a stable practice, which seats a handful of people.
- 04DisneySea 1-Day PassportPark passports are dated and capped. A sold-out Saturday cannot be argued with at the gate.
June rain, September storms, and the Japan that happens indoors.
The rainy season soaks most of the country through June, and the typhoon tail runs into early October. Neither ruins a trip. Both reward a plan with a roof in it: a kitchen, a tea room, a brush and a sheet of paper, a gallery, or a counter with a kettle on it.
By city, Hokkaido down to Okinawa
By kind of day, shrine to circuit
Freshly reviewed, Hokkaido down to Okinawa.
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