Honshu Tour Companies

It was great! Got to see a lot within the 11 days and our CEO was very friendly and helpful!

Tour group was fantastic. Emi the tour guide was so helpful, went above and beyond. Felt like you were with friends rather than a stranger. The hostels and other living arrangements were very nice, not at all like the reputation that hostels have in the rest of the world. Emi, the tour guide offered so many extra things to do for the group. Tea ceremonies, ninja experiences, etc. She also gave some great recommendations for places to go and things to do on your own. Two of my favorite things I did on this trip, the Kabuki theatre and the sanjusangendo temple, were her recommendations. The only thing I regret is not going on the longer tour so I could have more fun with the group. The description on the site does not do the tour justice. This tour is great for making new friends and having fun experiences in Japan.

Saw a lot in a short amount of time. Nice mix of traditional and modern culture, gorgeous scenery and views.

Our guide Sora was fabulous. Always attentive to our needs. We certainly saw everything that was described in the tour. The only down side was the way we had to resize our luggage and manually transport it for a lot of days, over many train and bus routes, thus did not have the contents of our main suitcases for a lot of our trip. Maybe the main suitcases could be transported by bus to the accommodation each night.

There were a lot of wonderful sites, temples, castles and gardens to view. Bus ride between places can be a bit long (2-4 hours). Would love to have spent more time in Kyoto, especially on our own. Could have done without seeing the festival floats. They were nice for the first 10 minutes, but didn't warrant the 1 hour to view all of the floats' mechanical movements. Description says there is a lot of walking, but didn't say that that would include steep embankments and lots of stairs. Overall a wonderful overview of Japan and Japanese culture. Would recommend to anyone even remotely interested in going to Japan.

I loved the cultural aspect of the tour. Tai, orur guide, was very patient and caring. Good group dynamics.

Extremely unprofessional experience all round. The tour is not as advertised. They claim a guide is with us the entire tour and we only get hotel reservations and qr codes for trains (which I had to harass the agent over WhatsApp to obtain) and local tour guides. Nobody picks you up at your hotel. You have to figure out a random meetup point with the local tour guide. In addition, it took me months with them before the tour to coordinate a train ticket change and they got it wrong multiple times on top of misquoting fares and realizing I could have done it right myself in a matter of minutes. Do yourself a favor: book a real tour or book everything on your own. You'll get better customer service from yourself and better fares. People pay the additional premium for a tour to have a more relaxed experience all round. This company is extra work and you have to do everything as if you had booked it yourself and shoulder what the agents do in order to get it right. I'm a seasoned traveller having travelled to 47 countries on 5 continents. By far this was the most unprofessional and incompetent travel experience I've had with any tour operator. I was given the ridiculous excuse that Japan was a hot destination and they were overwhelmed with requests and that's why things took time, and guess what: I'm the only person on this tour ! The only positive: you do get nice hotels and decent guides (which you can get on your own for just cheaper and much faster). I can only leave the worst of reviews here and save people money and disappointment.

Wonderful trip to Japan lots of things to know. The overall tour schedule was good.

Thoroughly enjoyed the tour. Just needed more hill climbing training. Being on the older side of things I would have been better off using an e bike but find they are too bulky. I preferred the lighter non electric bikes for maneuvering.

Lots of train travel,hours at a time.

Great itinerary but maybe consider a bigger bus :)

Itinerary covered many of the must see places. Long days, but still enough freetime to adventure on your own. Daan the guide was always in a positive mood and had a lot of recommendations for anything you want to see.

Excellent organization. We felt accompanied in every moment and the team was exceptionally responsive when it was needed. Our impression was absolutely positive and we strongly recommend them.

Great trip on the central part of Japan, good transportation and helpful guide, recommended!

Overall experience was good.

I really enjoyed the Japan 13 day tour, Joana my group leader was fabulous! Joana treated us like family and was always open for questions! My only critique for the itinerary would be potentially more time in Osaka but otherwise the luggage transfers were handy and ample free time included within the itinerary was great!

This was my first group tour trip with Intro Travel and had a great time! My group leader Joana was amazing and really helpful with everything! I learned a lot on the trip and overall had a fun time meeting other travelers and sightseeing all the cool places in Japan! Highly recommend! :)

Misleading information. Were treated to a budget experience at a premium package rate. Run ragged through Tokyo on all public transport. Not ideal for 65 year old knees. We saw the itinerary at a breakneck speed. No time to peruse markets or shops, they were not an interest to the guide any way. Our stay at Hakone was delightful. Missed just about every extra in the itinerary. 4 passengers, 3 paid premium, 1 paid budget - we all had budget experience. Our experience of Japan was most disappointing.

Really love the tour! Terry is super good!

Guides were very friendly and helpful

Well organized, personnel very helpful and knowledgeable

Excellent tour! I had such a great time with TruTravels. Our tourguide Marion and Claire were such sweethearts and gave a lot of tips and advice and a lot of history information. My group also so cool and we had so much fun for 12 days, time was flying so fast! This tour is great to discover the most popular places in Japan in a short time. I had no problems to travel with my group (with my luggage) and we did some additional activities like Teamlabs, Harry Potter Café, Nara Park, etc. I recommend apps like DeepL or Klook and also to buy a sim card beforehand as tourist sim card can be expensive in Japan (or maybe use eSim). The accommodation were also okayish, Tokyo and Osaka were a bit tight but the quality was good for the money. The activities like sushi workshop, kendo, tea ceremony, etc. were such amazing things and brought me closer to the culture. Overall I would book again with TruTravels, everything was great and amazing for my first time in Japan! 🥰💕

Hikari was the best tour guide we could have hoped for on this tour. She was fun friendly and had the best food and activity recommendations! She always got involved with all the activities as part of the group, always made sure everyone was looked after and having a great time. I can’t fault Hikari on anything on this tour and I came away with a new friend!

We had an amazing holiday. Japan was all we had hoped for. The group worked so well, we all got on and became good friends. Shingo, our guide was totally great. He was so pleasant and helpful. His English not brilliant but he did a great job. We felt maybe a little more information on places and sights might have been good. He was constantly helping us all and looking after us. He made great suggestions for meals and always checked up on us all, even when we split into smaller groups for the evening. He went way beyond what he could have done and made everyone feel safe and well looked after. He even helped booking all our onward travel and ensured we were all ok on the day. Wonderful man!! The hotels were nice, if a little small with almost no storage in most of them! Breakfasts were generally very good. We saw and did so much. In fact, we felt sometimes it was a little too much to fit into each day, and either missed some things out or were too rushed, missing stopping and looking at leisure at things and shops etc. Shingo was so patient, even when we caused him to run a little late! Due to distances covered we spent a lot of time travelling which was an interesting experience. Just meant time at destinations was a little short. As Most of us were older we all felt very tired at the end of each day and struggled especially when we had to carry back packs whilst waiting to be reunited with luggage. Dont know what the answer is, if extra days added, then expense goes up. If itinerary cut back, then Interesting sights missed out! Overall, a truly great trip. We enjoyed it all!

I had a wonderful time on this trip - Japan was incredible. Very full, but excellent itinerary - this trip is packed with culture, history and delicious food. Our tour leader was fantastic and worked incredibly hard to make the experience what it was.

Nice. But too many temples.

The tour was managed very well. The local tour guides were excellent and everything was very well organized.

The Japan winter wonder trip has been a hit and miss for me. Hit: 1. Contiki has been professional in its hotel accommodation arrangement. 2. Our tour manager Renee has been very friendly and helpful, so does the local Japanese tour guides hired in different cities. 3. The organized tours cover most of the top destinations in each city. 4. The pace of the tour is good, as it mixed organized tours and free time add-ons. Miss: 1. We were brought to shopping plaza for lunch / dinner a few times. Contiki can do a better job recommending highly rated local restaurants for us to have a better dining experience. 2. Contiki is first and foremost an Australian travel agency targeting yound Australians. > 90% of your fellow travelers are young Australians (< 25 years old). If you do not conform to this demographic, you will likely have a hard time connecting with many of your fellow travelers. 3. Related to point 2 above, heavy drinking / partying can be expected throughout the trip. If you are not a drinker or party animal, you may want to think twice about joining this trip.

Contiki knocked it out of the park 10/10