Our travel guide Katherine absolutely made this experience, she was an absolute gem and we all adored her. Her knowledge, care and attentiveness was fantastic. The itinerary was great overall, however needs tweaking as mentioned above
We thoroughly enjoyed our walking tour with tour guide Akemi, who was patient, informative, energetic and highly organised. The group was fourteen in number, which was about as big as you would want for such a tour, given that we were utilising public transport, and doing a number of group activies such as dining and visiting interesting historical sights. We felt fully immersed in the environment, whether in busy city settings or trekking through forests. The accomodations were all very good (some excellent), the dining was excellent, and the overall pace of the tour was good. It was nice to have a couple of stops where we spent two or three days, exploring the local scene and catching up on laundry etc. Everyone got along very well and we credit Akemi with taking us on a wonderful and engaging experience.
This was a brilliant trip with a great group of fellow travellers. It took us along the length of Honshu, from the coast, cities, and into the mountains, using very efficient public transport - the Shinkansen & Tokyo metro which are experiences in themselves. We saw friendly deer, excitable snow monkeys and dressed-up dogs in prams (an example of an eccentric sight Japan will offer many of). It offered relaxing moments like bathing in the hot springs and warming sake, to quite intense moments like navigating busy train stations and some longer days on our feet exploring parks and cities.