Nishiki Market
Duration: 11 days / Meals: 10 breakfasts and two dinners / Price: $5,255
Day 1: Arrive in Tokyo
Upon arrival at Narita International Airport, your guide will assist with the transfer to the Keio Plaza Hotel Tokyo, a luxury hotel located in central Tokyo’s bustling Shinjuku district.
Day 2: Tour of Tokyo
Enjoy a morning tour of Tokyo, a hyperactive center of technology, fashion, art and architecture, and pop culture. Highlights include the Imperial Palace Plaza and Tsukiji Outer Market, a lively food district known for its seafood stalls, restaurants and specialty shops. A great spot for photos is Sensoji Temple. It is Tokyo’s oldest and most celebrated temple. Have lunch and go shopping on your own along Nakamise Street, a pedestrian lane not far from the temple gates. The street’s 80-some vendors sell everything from fans, chopsticks, and kimonos to snacks, crafts and Hello Kitty items.
Return to the hotel for a relaxed evening.
Lake Ashi
Day 3: Hakone and Mt. Fuji
Travel from Tokyo to Hakone, a town noted for its hot springs and proximity to snow-capped Mt.Fuji, Japan’s tallest (12,388 feet) and most famous peak. Begin with a visit to Mt. Fuji 5th Station or the Fujisan World Heritage Center, which has artwork, high-tech exhibits, and videos of mountain ascents. After lunch, view the majestic volcanic mountain from your cruise boat on Lake Ashi. Then ride a cable car up Mt. Komagatake, where panoramas of the lake and Mt. Fuji can be enjoyed from the upper station.
End the day with dinner at a ryokan (traditional inn). Overnight is at the Hakone Yunohana Prince Hotel, a Japanese-style hot springs hotel.
Day 4 Matsumoto and Takayama
Travel from Hakone to Matsumoto, a charming town set in a valley surrounded by the peaks of the Japanese Alps. Visit Matsumoto Castle, one of Japan’s oldest castles. Completed in the 1600s, the national treasure is nicknamed Crow Castle for its black outer walls.
Enjoy some free time in the area before continuing to the mountain town of Takayama for an evening at leisure and dinner at the hotel, Mercure Hida Takayama. Facilities include the indoor and outdoor onsens (hot-spring baths) on the top floor, where guests can unwind while taking in the beautiful scenery.
Day 5 Full Day Tour of Takayama
Begin at the open-air Miyagawa Morning Market, the perfect place for people watching. More than 60 shops and stalls along the Miyagawa River purvey fresh produce, street foods, and locally made crafts such as traditional dolls and stylish chopsticks. Then visit Kusakabe Folk Crafts Museum, which displays lacquered bowls, wood carvings, and other crafts in the 1880s house of a wealthy merchant family.
Lunch is on Kamisannomachi Street in the well-preserved Sanmachi Suji historic district, home to centuries-old wooden houses, sake breweries, and artisan shops. Next, visit the Hida Takayama Retro Museum, a nostalgic place with vintage video games to play and other flashbacks to the 20th century. Another highlight is the Art & Festa Forest, an underground museum complex with life-size replicas of floats from the famous Takayama Festival, mechanical puppet shows, and the world’s largest taiko drum.
The day wraps up with a culinary experience—learning to make senbei, the traditional Japanese rice cracker
Day 6 Shirakawago and Kanazawa
Transfer from Takayama to the Shirakawago region, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its thatched-roof farmhouses and barns. These fairy-tale examples of traditional gassho-zukuri architecture, many of them over 200 years old, feature thick layers of reed-thatched roofs on steeply pitched roofs built at a 60-degree angle to withstand massive snowfalls.
After lunch, travel to Kanazawa and visit Kanazawa Castle Park, where several historic structures survive alongside carefully reconstructed gates, turrets and storehouses. Overnight at the Hotel Kanazawa.
Fushimi-Inari Shrine
Day 7 Kyoto
Take the train from Kanazawa to Kyoto. Your half-day tour in Kyoto starts with a visit to Nishiki Market, a bustling street lined with produce stalls and restaurants serving every kind of food imaginable. Next, follow the pathway through the famous tunnel of 10,000 vermillion-colored torii gates at the mountainside Fushimi-Inari Shrine, a Shinto shrine dedicated to the goddess of rice, sake, and prosperity.
The evening is free to explore. Settle in for a two-night stay at the Miyako Hotel Kyoto Hachijo.
Day 8 Kyoto and Nara
Visit three of Kyoto’s top sights: the magnificent gold-sheathed Kinkakuji Temple (Golden Pavilion); Nijo Castle, constructed by a powerful shogun in 1603; and the mesmerizing canopy of towering bamboo trees at Arashiyama Bamboo Grove.
Continue to the small town of Nara to visit Todaiji Temple and the 49-foot-tall bronze statue of the Great Buddha. Mingle with the free-roaming deer at Nara Deer Park before returning to Kyoto.
Day 9 Hiroshima & Miyajima Island
From Hiroshima, take the ferry to Miyajima Island to visit temples and see the red-orange O-Torii Gate of Itsukushima, an iconic shrine that rises majestically from the seabed. From one of the stalls along Omotesando Shopping Street, make a lunch out of grilled oysters and other local specialties and maple-leaf-shaped cakes (momiji-manju) filled with chocolate, custard, or red bean paste.
Return to Hiroshima to tour Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, a garden-like expanse with monuments and memorials honoring victims of the world’s first atomic bomb, dropped by an American B-29 plane on August 6, 1945, during World War II. The museum has charred artifacts and shows a documentary film and video testimonies of survivors. At the center of the park is the Atomic Bomb Dome, the ruins of a former exhibition hall.
Your accommodation is the centrally located ANA Crowne Plaza Hiroshima.
Day 10 Osaka
Take the bullet train from Hiroshima to Osaka and spend the final day of the trip exploring Japan’s third-largest city at your own pace. A trend-setting metropolis populated by friendly locals, it is known for its youthful energy, world-class food scene and vast shopping arcades, including labyrinthine underground retail complexes. The wild shops of Den Den Town offer a bewildering array of pop culture merchandise.
Day 11 Depart from Osaka
Board your transfer to Osaka Station, marking the end of your group’s adventure in Japan.
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