Our favourite Japan tours and excursions

Gone are the days when the only Japanese arts and crafts the West had heard were origami and ikebana flower-arranging.  

In Japan, there is no hierarchy between art and craft. Origami and ikebana are just two drops in a deep ocean, and each of these myriad techniques and practices is treated as an art form. These range from (to name a few) dyeing, weaving and embroidery to ceramics, paper-making, lacquerware, printing, metalworking and calligraphy. Running through much of Japanese craft is a philosophy that imperfections can be beautiful. For instance, in the art of kintsugi, broken pottery is repaired with powdered gold or silver, while sashiko is a type of decorative embroidery used to mend and reinforce fabric. We can arrange one-off workshops in almost any craft imaginable, or, if you’re a real enthusiast, we can organise a deeper dive into a craft, including guided visits to ateliers and even whole trips themed around your passion.

Japanese taiko drumming is an all-sensory experience that’ll have your brain and your body racing to keep up. 

Forget marching bands and driving rock beats, taiko is an all-kicking, all-dancing, all-jumping-around endeavour, with tightly choreographed performances including shouts and calls, sweeping arm movements, and other musical accompaniments. Taiko is competitive (Japan’s professional groups perform all over the world), but it’s also incredibly accessible. Join a taiko lesson (dressed in traditional garb) and you’ll find yourself letting loose in no time, throwing in all manner of lunges and flourishes as you get the hang of the basic rhythms. It’s a super-fun way to dive into Japanese culture without feeling like you’re being educated, and it’s particularly great for families. 

Combining a kawaii sensibility with a love of orderly queues, Japan might as well be the spiritual home of the theme park. 

Japan has exactly the right combination of safety-consciousness, cleanliness, and sheer, off-the-wall wackiness to ensure that every theme park visit is an absolute dream. There are the biggest of the big names: Disneyland, DisneySea and Universal Studios (the latter complete with a full-sized Hogsmeade Village at Harry Potter World). There are the rollercoasters of Fuji Q Highland for the thrill-seekers, the immersive Ghibli Museum for lovers of Japanese animation, and historical parks like Meiji Mura and Nikko Edomura to introduce you to different periods of Japanese history. Then, we get to the weird and wonderful — including a Dutch-themed park, several Hello Kitty lands, and even an onsen theme park in Osaka. Forget pushy crowds and inedible, overpriced food: this is fun done right.

Wedged between skyscrapers, sprawling across islands, perched on mountaintops and scattered throughout the countryside: temples and shrines are everywhere in Japan. 

Strictly speaking, temples are Buddhist and shrines are Shinto, but the two faiths are so deeply intertwined that most Japanese make little distinction between the two. For both quantity and quality, head to Kyoto — home to many of the oldest and most beautiful in Japan. For the most sacred, see the grand shrine at Ise, dedicated to the sun goddess Amaterasu and rebuilt in its entirety every 20 years. For opulence there’s Toshogu Shrine at Nikko, for size there’s Todai-ji at Nara, and for atmosphere there’s the temple-top community of Mount Koya. Sometimes, however, the best discoveries are the ones you make yourself — like the shrine to business hidden in a shopping arcade, or the mossy temple tucked away on a forest path — so don’t forget to explore.

You don’t need to be particularly spiritual to agree that staying at a shukubo, or temple lodging, is one of those only-in-Japan experiences that’ll stay with you long after you’ve returned home. 

We wouldn’t call it roughing it, but staying at a shukubo isn’t for the high maintenance. These Buddhist temple guesthouses were (and still are, for the most part) pilgrims’ hostels, not plush ryokan —  though both have tatami mats, sliding doors and shoji paper screens. Ranging from the simple to the austere, shukubo usually have shared bathrooms, chilly corridors (in winter) and few mod-cons. Don’t expect Wi-Fi or a TV, but do expect to enjoy delicious, beautifully prepared vegetarian cuisine, and to get up early to absorb the sombre, incense-infused atmosphere of morning prayers. It’s all about disconnecting from the modern world and immersing yourself in a way of life that’s remained unchanged for centuries, and for us that’s a magical experience.