Our favorite Japan tours and excursions

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 somber, 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. 

Our favorite cycling tour takes you out of old-town Takayama and into the slow-paced rhythms of the countryside. 

Start in the little town of Hida Furukawa, where the streets are lined with carp streams and sake breweries. From here, head out into the Hida countryside: mile upon mile of pancake-flat paddy field and steep-roofed farming villages, all surrounded by the thickly forested peaks of the Hida mountain range. With your guide to interpret, you’ll be able to say hello to whoever’s about — whether it’s schoolchildren on their way home from lunch, or elderly locals selling strawberries at the local market. Stop to refuel with snacks at a local deli or farm shop, and find out what life is like outside of Japan’s big cities. We’ve never met anyone who hasn’t had a smile and time to stop and chat.

If we had to pick one experience to sum up Japan (and thank goodness we don’t), it’d be the traditional ryokan inn. 

The ryokan isn’t just a Japanese-style hotel, it’s the encapsulation of what hospitality means to the Japanese. The quality of a ryokan isn’t measured in the plushness of its luxuries or the opulence of its interior décor. In fact, even the most exclusive ryokan room might contain nothing but a low table and a futon laid on a tatami-mat floor. Instead, you tell the quality of a ryokan by its exquisite multi-course, seasonal cuisine, by the warm, heartfelt hospitality of the host, and most of all by its onsen hot spring baths — arguably the most Japanese cultural experience of all.