Taking the time to write this review to share information I wish I had before booking this trip.
1) Travel manager: was immature and unprofessional, making very inappropriate sexual jokes throughout the trip and playing the flute poorly on purpose on the coach bus as another supposed joke. He was also relentlessly engaging in self promotion. I understand that timeliness is important in Japanese culture, but he seemed to care very little about the safety and wellbeing of travelers and often abandoned part of the group if they were lagging a bit behind. He also seemed to know little about the culture (kept mentioning travelers always taught him more than he knew) and always recommended going to/eating at touristic and overpriced locations. Based on his performance, I would have given 0 stars...
2) Local guides: The local guides were amazing and a definite highlight of the trip.
3) Accommodations: most were average at best. I was traveling with a partner and had made the request to have a double bed instead of two twins at the time of booking. This was only arranged at the first hotel. There are also two stays where accommodations are arranged by gender in groups of 4. This was not mentioned anywhere in the material available ahead of the trip, and we were not given the option of arranging/booking alternative accommodations to stay together.
4) Food: Most breakfast buffets were pretty good, and the Hida beef dinner FTA was great. However, not having breakfast included for half of the trip was definitely a drawback and including all breakfasts would greatly improve the travel experience.
5) Activities: The activities in Tokyo were all in very touristic locations and going to Shinjuku and Shibuya Crossing was not memorable. The rest of the itinerary was very good and interesting, and helped us discover areas of Japan we would not have visited otherwise. We enjoyed having a lot of free time to explore on our own.
6)Transport: Transport was generally very well organized. Our main complaint is that the cost of returning to the hotel from included activities by public transport was not included in the ICOCA card balance, which feels quite cheap...
7)General vibe/ group: the composition of groups will definitely vary, but we were very surprised to find out that a trip to Japan attracted a very young party focused crowd. There is nothing wrong with that, but we were mostly interested in sightseeing and discovering Japanese culture, and found that the trip was definitely organized for the younger/party demographic.
