Splendours of Japan Reviews

The first night accommodation at Tokyo was amazing, New Otani. From there on the accommodation was very good. The tour covered everything from food, culture, history and local feel. I can totally recommend this tour to anyone wanting a bit of everything Japan has to offer.

Nine days is a short tour of Japan, especially as the first and last days are travel days. The tour was well organised and well paced with a balance of planned activities and free time - especially in the centres of Tokyo and Kyoto. The guide was helpful and accommodating with good local insight. The hotels were great with an excellent level of service ...read more and cleanliness. The tour had a good balance of activities (sushi making, paper making) and visits to temples and sites. The optional activities were mainly dinners and not well attended by the group. As a family of three (15 yr old daughter), it was a great first tour of an interesting and beautiful country - we were lucky enough to be there during cherry blossom time!

The best season to visit Japan. The tour director was very friendly, caring & helpful. Clean hotels & bathrooms, and hotels had easy access to shops. Nice to meet some friends during the tour, I will definitely will book my guided tours with Trafalgar. Global Journeys is highly trusted & I'd recommend for the booking of holidays.

Very happy with Global Journeys, Georgie was very helpful and very patient with our booking. Unfortunately we are very disappointed with Trafalgar itinerary! It started with a nice welcome reception... but then it started to go downhill!
The reason we booked with Trafalgar is that we believed they do the research and put the energy to put together ...read more something special ! That's why we paid more to get a better service! Unfortunately Trafalgar was not up to standard this time, so many little things that need a great improvement. Every visit seemed to be rushed. We didn't even have a single tour guide for any cities we went to get an in depth history of the town. Very poor itinerary. It was mainly seeing temples.

While we were there there was sumo fighting and also Geisha dancing on and there was not even a mention of it to see if we wanted to have that as an optional or even a pamphlet to see if we wanted to do that on our own time!
I think the tour leader should have this information in advance and share it with the travelers! They are the ones who need to do the research before hand as they are familiar with seasonal programs! Food experiences were ok , till the end where we went to Ninja restaurant and all the waiters were confused! Which made the last night of being together not as enjoyable! On the other hand we truly enjoyed the company of our group mates, that made us really happy to meet amazing people from all around the world :) and that's what we take from this trip :) looking forward to more bookings with Global Journeys.

The trip had an overall excellent itinerary, especially for those who enjoy both the scenery of large cities as well as the countryside of Japan. The booking made through Global Journeys was initially somewhat disjointed when my agent left and was replaced with another. However, once the trip was underway, everything sailed smoothly.

Overall, it was a good experience. We met some interesting people on the trip. Tour director Coco was amazing. She was extremely patient (even when there was a particularly annoying/ difficult co-passenger). The places we visited had a good mix of temples, castles, art, local activity/cuisine etc. We got tired of the castles towards the end of the trip. ...read more The cherry blossoms were not in full bloom as expected. The pace of the trip was good. Some of us decided to explore more places outside of the tour times (took local trains, went to Tokyo tower, Shibuya station and Harajuku - not covered in the trip). What was really disappointing was the false information about bullet train journey and another visit to a particular place on day 2. Trafalgar kept the incorrect information in the itinerary for an entire year! There is no point keep misleading information. Most of the meals were catered to, the rest we bought on our own. If you happen to be someone who does not enjoy authentic Japanese food, does not like exploring new foods or plain dislike carbs, I would suggest you pre purchase meals. This is meant to be an overall cultural experience but we had some people on the tour craving western food every day. We were keen to try different foods and tried to soak up the entire experience. Learning basic phrases in Japanese came in very handy.

We really enjoyed this tour. Our guide was excellent and went above and beyond what was expected - we would like this feedback to be passed onto her. The cost was very good for what was supplied. We would recommend Global Journeys too.