Testimonials

Mr. Patt

Our tour guide, Billy, the driver and itinerary were all great. We learned much about Japan - including modern attitudes as well as great stories from history. We enjoyed every day. Great mixture of seeing historical sites and some fun with monkeys and deer. The Geisha dinner, tea ceremony, Jidai festival parade and Kimono rentals were all fun. Making sushi was fun. We loved the Itchiku Kubota Kimono and The Hokusai-kan Museums. I will recommend AJT to everyone I meet. We enjoyed the company of fellow travelers and the warm hospitality from everyone we met.

Ms. Walsh & Ms. Hartshorn

Went beyond my expectations. Every day was well planned and I can’t say enough about our tour guide, Billy. He shared his wealth of knowledge and experience every step of the way. I’ve never taken a tour before, but All Japan Tours make me want to take a tour to every country I visit, especially non-English speaking countries. But I’d want Billy to be my tour guide, as he was the BEST.

The Hunter Family

We throughly enjoyed our tour, Kim was the best tour guide ever! We have been telling friends and family about how wonderful our tour was. Our two favorite things were the snow monkeys and Hiroshima. Kim was very good at answers any questions we had, she went out of her way to do anything she could to accommodate us.

Roy, John, & Patrick

Well organized and well managed by our guide, James Ono

Ms.Blume

This was a great tour and Billy was awesome! Unfortunately, we were hit or miss on the cherry blossoms but I loved Japan, the people, the food and many wonderful sites.

Ms. Palmer & Mr. Maroney

The tour was very good. Phillip was a good guide and his English was good. All of the accommodations were nice. The Ryokan stay was especially fun. All of the provided meals were delicious, and there was a good variety of (too much?) food. There were too many delicious meals to comment on them specifically, but the kaiseki meals at the ryokan and the special sushi dinner on Miyajima Island stand out as being very special. (Wrt the latter, however, please note that the meal took two hours, and that was with Phillip pushing them to try to move along faster bc of our agenda. Also it will not work for a larger group bc the establishment is very small. We were only three.) We were a little surprised to miss the peak colors. However, we also enjoyed lovely, warm weather. We were lucky to catch sight of Mt Fuji from Lake Kawaguchi, although clouds obscured it by the time we walked up to Chureito Pagoda after lunch. The tour time in Tokyo seemed short, but were suited to an Autumn Leaves tour. Overall I would have preferred less shopping and more sightseeing, but that’s us personally and others do enjoy shopping. The garden was beautiful. The snow monkeys at Yudanaka Onsen were a high point! The Hokusai Museum was disappointing, bc it was half- closed (I think they said they were rearranging the exhibits). It was still worth a stop. The hike along a short portion of the Nakasendo trail from Magome was disappointing. We were an older tour group with some people who had some mobility issues. After the stairs and uneven terrain at Yudanaka, which we all managed, our tour guide told us that while the subsequent hike was long, it wasn’t steep or uneven and didn’t have stairs, and actually most of that was untrue. Consequently, everyone elected to embark on the full hike and not all of us could manage it. It took too long for us all to do the first part of the hike and thus we all had to quit after the falls. It was a lovely hike, and of course we were not guaranteed to be able to do the hike at all bc the weather may not have been suitable. But it was a part of the tour that I was really looking forward to and I was very disappointed at having to quit halfway through. Had we been given the correct information, maybe not everyone would have gone, and the rest of us could have done the complete walk. It’s a small issue - no one got hurt and we all managed to participate - but it was a disappointment bc I was so looking forward to it. Phillip rearranged the timing of our stay in Kyoto and Nara in order to maximize what we could see in two days, which we appreciated. And when Sayako-San stepped in for a day, that was all fine and seamlessly handled. I loved the Bamboo Forest, another high point for me. In Osaka we were picked up at noon, but then we only had an hour to spend at the Castle (not even). That was far too little time. I didn’t really need over two hours to shop after, either. I would have much preferrred a 10:30 - 11:00 start or less time shopping. The TeamLab event wasn’t great in my opinion. I think that was just me, or maybe just us bc we happened to be older. Hiroshima was explored in a balanced and sensitive manner. However, our tour guide thought one hour was sufficient for the museum, and really we could have spent 2-1/2 hrs there (we stayed 1/2 hour longer than the allotted hour). But I understand that some would only be able to stand an hour there bc it’s very difficult. And we are people who like to spend time at museums. Finishing the Hiroshima leg off at Miyajima Island was perfect. The lunch took so long that we were later than planned and had zero time to look for souvenirs and we had only a short stay off the cable car. But we had a great day. A note about the hotel in Hiroshima - it was amazing and our view couldn’t be beat. But it was pretty far from everything and there were few restaurant options. Phillip told us we needed reservations for dinner, but we couldn’t get one for our second night so we had to get a cab to go somewhere. The originally proposed hotel near the train station could have been a better choice, tho it wouldn’t have been as nice. Ok, so I’m half-Japanese and somewhat familiar with Japanese culture. So my response to some of the cultural “experiences” might have been colored by this. I thought the sushi-making was overly tourist-y. It was ok but seemed rather silly. The Geisha/Maiko experience was not only tourist-y but was also disappointing in the classroom style setup. We all had expected it to be for our tour group, somehow. The kimono session was not new to me and it seemed like cultural appropriation. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it. The Sumo experience was horrible and should definitely not be included in the tour. It was just a joke and we’d been expecting some actual, if not truly competitive, sumo wrestling and education. That was the worst part of the tour. I already know how to make okonomiyaki and thought that part in Hiroshima unnecessary. But Hiroshima style okonimiyaki is different so it was fun, despite the touristy flavor. The driver was excellent and very patient/helpful.