Discovering Sacred Sites & Preserved Traditions of Japan Tour (14 Days Tour)

Tokyo – A Blend of Modern and Ancient

This morning, your hotel offers a buffet breakfast. After eating, your guide for the day picks you up at the hotel. Today is a day of sightseeing in this magnificent city, using the efficient train system to zoom between destinations.

Your first stop is the Hamarikyu Gardens located on the shore of Tokyo Bay. Over 400 years ago, the gardens were owned by the Tokugawa family, the most powerful family in Japan during the Edo Period (1603-1868). With freshwater ponds, seawater moats, and exquisitely maintained gardens, you feel transported back to the 17th-century. To enhance your experience, a tea house in the park’s center offers matcha green tea and traditional Japanese sweets.

From the gardens, you board a Sumida River cruise that takes you into Tokyo Bay. Revel in the skyline as the scenery constantly changes. The cruise disembarks in Asakusa, where you continue on foot to Senso-ji, Tokyo’s oldest Buddhist temple. Guarded by the largest paper lantern in the city, Senso-ji is a testament to Tokyo’s past.

Lunch is on your own, but in a city like Tokyo, it is no challenge to find anything from haute cuisine to filling fast food. In fact, some of Tokyo’s best food on the go is sold in the city’s train stations. Don’t be surprised to find selections ranging from Italian pizza to kaiten, conveyer belt sushi restaurants, right next to one another.

You go from ancient to modern as you travel west to Omotesando, a high-end shopping district that can be compared to the Avenue des Champ-Elysees in Paris. The tree-lined streets provide excellent shade as you experience the rich life touring the various stores and sights.

In the late afternoon, visit Meiji Shrine. One of the largest shrines in the city, it is dedicated to the spirit of Emperor Meiji, Japan’s first modern emperor. Walk down the dirt paths, admiring primordial nature just a few feet away. At the shrine itself, learn the purification rituals required to enter a sacred space before offering your prayers by writing them on a small wooden tablet. With the light filtering through the tree canopy, it is a magical way to end your first full day in Japan.

What’s Included: breakfast, transfer, tour, accommodation.

Kiso Valley – Walk the Nakasendo Trail

Today you say goodbye to Tokyo. You board the Shinkansen, one of the fastest trains on Earth. Over the next few hours, while riding the Shinkansen, a local train, and bus, you travel back in time when these modern forms of transportation did not exist. During the Edo Period, tens of thousands of people annually walked the Nakasendo Trail between Tokyo and Nagoya. As you enter the Kiso Valley, you become part of this traveling tradition.

Your first destination of the day is Magome, once a post town that offered travelers rest and relaxation. The town is beautifully restored, and with the majestic Japanese Alps as the backdrop, you feel transported back in time as you explore the variety of small museums, shops, and restaurants.

To immerse yourself in the past, your day features a five-mile hike between Magome and Tsumago. Stroll along the restored path in soft afternoon light, stopping periodically to admire blooming flowers or the foliage. Magome offers a luggage transfer service for a small fee. When you arrive in Tsumago, your bags are waiting for you.

Tsumago is truly a town worth exploring. You notice right away that the aesthetics are more rustic, and blend in with the surrounding environment. It is definitely worth your time to visit the preserved inns which once catered to shogun officials.

This evening, your hotel in Tsumago is a minshuku, a family-run hotel converted from an Edo Period house. Expect tatami mat floors and sliding rice paper doors. For dinner, dine on kaiseki, a Japanese cuisine that features local ingredients, a variety of flavors and textures, and superb presentation. As you drift off to sleep in your futon, you feel an affinity with the countless generations of Japanese who once ended their day in the same way.

Takayama to Shirakawago – Preserved Traditions

Takayama is famous for its morning market. Each day farmers and artisans come from their homes in the Takayama Valley to sell their wares. It is a perfect place to pick up a souvenir or local ingredients you can take back home to share a taste of Japan with family and friends.

At noon, you catch a bus to Shirakawago, a UNESCO World Heritage Site famed for its gassho-zukuri thatched roof houses. Arriving after only an hour’s journey, you are struck by the roofs’ unique architecture, designed to hold up the heavy snow that collects there each winter. Your first stop is the Wada house. Once owned by one of the town’s richest families, the house has had many roles in its 300+ year life: home, storehouse, silk factory, and government office. Inside, tour the displays explaining the process of silk worm raising, an industry that for many centuries was the town’s specialty.

Wada house owns its long life to the local community, who have maintained the village’s structures for centuries. The construction of a single roof requires the labor of dozens of individuals, and is akin to an Amish barn raising. Even today, when the families in Shirakawago have all the amenities of 21st-century life, traditional building practices persist.

This evening, you have the opportunity to stay in a gassho-zukuri minshuku run by a local family. You can expect the same mouthwatering cuisine and comfortable accommodations as your time in Takayama.

What’s Included: breakfast, transfer, tour, accommodation.

Kanazawa to Hiroshima – Samurai Homes and Modern Art

You have most of today to continue exploring Kanazawa on your own. After breakfast, we recommend starting with the Nagamachi district, a preserved area where hundreds of years ago samurai lived with their families.

Within this district is Nomura house, a renovated samurai home with many historical artifacts on display, items the samurai used in their daily lives. Just a few steps away is the Shinise Kinenkan Museum, a renovated Edo Period pharmacy. Touring the display, learn about how the Japanese merchant class prospered while the samurai class declined.

Just outside the Nagamachi district are many outdoor cafes and tea houses where you can enjoy lunch before continuing your self-guided tour of the city. Visit the 21st-Century Museum of Contemporary Art, a stunning contrast to the ancient history in which you were just immersed. One of Japan’s most popular museums, the interactive exhibits rekindle child-like curiosity. One of the most famous displays is Leandro Erlich’s “Swimming Pool.”

Looking down into the shimmering water, it appears as if the other museum patrons are walking along the bottom of the pool. Yet they are completely dry, an astonishing optical illusion. In the mid-afternoon, you begin your four-hour train journey to Hiroshima. It is recommended that you purchase a bento box meal your journey, as dinnertime will have already passed when you arrive. Your hotel for your two nights in Hiroshima is western-style.

What’s Included: breakfast, transfer, accommodation.

Kotohira – Beautiful Temples

Today you take a two-hour train ride to Kotohira, a coastal city in Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands. Rarely visited by foreign tourists, Kotohira is home to Shikoku’s most well-known shrine: Kompirasan. Experiencing its beauty requires good walking shoes, as pilgrims and visitors must walk up over 1,300 steps flanked by dense forests which provide ample shade on sunny days. It is possible to take your time during the climb, as there are stops along the way perfect for taking photographs or rest.

You discover that the walk is worth it when you arrive at the main hall. With its combination of Shinto and Buddhist architecture, Kompirasan is a symbol of how these two religions, so different at first glance, blend seamlessly in Japanese culture. Spend your time here exploring the grounds and gardens.

After making your way back down the stone steps, check in to your ryokan. Rest your tired feet and legs in the ryokan’s onsen baths, some of the best in Japan, before sitting down to a feast of local seafood caught fresh from the Seto Inland Sea.

What’s Included: breakfast, transfer, accommodation.

Kyoto – Golden Temples and Serene Gardens

This morning, your guide picks you up at your hotel. Your first stop is Nijo Castle, where in 1603, the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu built his Kyoto residence. For over 250 years, Japan’s shoguns stayed at this impressive fortification while in Kyoto on business. Now open to the public, explore its grandeur and feel transported back to Japan’s feudal past. While inside, see the area where the shogun would receive guests, and the secret rooms from where his bodyguards would watch over the proceedings. Outside, the tree lined walking paths are at their most beautiful in fall, where the foliage turns brilliant shades of yellow and red.

From there, you head to Ryoan-ji Temple, known worldwide for its rock garden. Every day the temple’s monks maintain the 500-year-old design, a representation of the world’s oceans. Situated far away from modern Kyoto, it is a perfect spot for mediation.

Kinkaku-ji, the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, is surely Kyoto’s most impressive sight. Completely covered in gold leaf, the temple is a work of art and a Zen Buddhist temple. Walking around the temple moat, you feel enchanted by its beauty.

Your final stop of the day is Kyomizu-dera. This Buddhist temple’s location on a mountainside provides visitors with breathtaking views of Kyoto and the surrounding mountains. Like Nijo Castle, the view is best in fall, when the changing colors turn the mountains into a striking landscape. As you leave the temple, walk back down towards Kyoto through the Higashiyama district. The preserved Edo Period buildings offer a variety of restaurants, souvenir shops, and small grocery stores that sell local ingredients.

This evening dinner is on your own, but with the wide variety of options in Kyoto, finding a satisfying meal is no trouble.

What’s Included: breakfast, transfer, tour, accommodation.

Kyoto – We’ll Meet Again

In the last two weeks, you have seen and done so much in Japan. There are stories to tell and souvenirs to give. Yet you leave Japan with so much still unexplored, so many treasures left uncovered. There is another trip to Japan in your future. The only question is when.  

What’s Included: breakfast, airport transfer.