Hi everyone, I'm a new member here and I wanted to ask your advice. My family and I are planning to visit Japan on a tour package sometime in July. We're looking to find quite a detailed tour as we've never been there before, and the 'Two Week Grand Tour of Japan' package from JTB Sunrise Tours looks very interesting. However, I've never had dealings with this agency before, and though I am aware that many customers have been very satisfied with JTB's shorter tours, I was wondering if anyone here who has gone for or has any knowledge of their longer ones could inform me whether they're good or not? Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

XmorganX

XmorganX:

Welcome aboard!

I haven't done much touring & I don't have a lot to offer, but I will check with others for an answer.

I expect that some of the regulars on this board will have more information.

Sent my parents on one of the shortish one's......they seemed happy with the tour, but were not happy to see what I had spent on it. ;) . JTB is an enormous company which for the most part has a strangle hold on the Japanese package tour/ ticket/ scene. I wouldn't worry about your money with them........Just a thought......instead of taking a 2 week tour I would suggest a few local tours of short duration with extra time spent by yourselves in a few chosen locations.

Probably you won't find people here who take this type of tour, but I did find the itinerary and look at it, so here are some comments.

There are a number of things I dislike about this tour, but here is the link so others can comment and tell me where I went wrong:

http://act.jtbgmt.com/itdt/scripts/sunrise/sunrise_detail.asp?webyear=2006&orig=agent&webg=1100&t_gp=Y&t_no=O950

For starters, the hotels are decent and totally unmemorable, with the possible exception of the Westin Miyako on the "C" package, which is memorable positively IF you get a decent room, and the New Miyako hotel on the "B" package, which is memorable negatively.

The "cheap" Tokyo hotel selection is the Shinagawa Prince and the "expensive" Tokyo selection is the Takanawa Prince hotel. Not much of a range there -- the cheap selection is probably almost as good as the expensive one.

Second, the ONLY day in Tokyo on the tour is the day after arrival, the day you will be most jetlagged. You get a half-day tour and the next day start doing day trips to Kamakura and Nikko. Ironically, you get two free days in Kyoto after a full day of a Kyoto/Nara tour.

I have never been to Ise Pearl Island or spent a night in Toba but Toba, Nagoya, and Ise Island are given two full days -- days that I bet would be much better spent at Hiroshima and Miyajima (not included on the tour) and by adding another day to Tokyo.

What the heck IS Toba famous for? I've never heard of it. Nagoya castle is the only castle visited. I've been there, it's pretty ordinary, and although I haven't been to Himeji, I'd have proposed Himeji instead.

For a price range of Y332k-Y449k per person, double occupancy, I'd say that this is a tour only for those unwilling to organize things for themselves. The preferred approach would be to get 7 day JR passes, spend time in Tokyo in the beginning, and Kyoto at the end, with the pass valid in the middle. Arrive at NRT, depart from KIX, and organize it yourself, possibly with the help of a few shorter tours from JTB along the way. You'll save money and have a better time if you do your homework.

The first time I came to Japan was as a tourist over 20 years ago. My entire extended family and a bunch of friends of my parents came along. There were 33 of us, so we had JTB organize us a "private" 2-week tour of Japan with our own bus. We sort of stuck to the original schedule for the first few days (you know, half day tour of Tokyo, day visit to Nikko, day visit to Kamakura, etc.) By day 4, we were getting antsy, so we blew off an afternoon at Kabuki and went to Tsukuba instead to see the Expo. Then, we went on to Hakone, climbed halfway up Mt. Fuji (because it was there, but not on the schedule), visited Kyoto and kept going against the tour plan, the tour guide's wishes, and the schedule. We wanted to see Hiroshima, and by gum, we were going to go there! We also rode the Shinkansen back and forth all the way to Hakata because we could.

The tour guide was intensely mortified, we had her in tears, and by day 10 or so she just quit the tour and left us with the bus driver to our own devices. That was one hell of a memorable trip!

....The tour guide was intensely mortified, we had her in tears, and by day 10 or so she just quit the tour and left us with the bus driver to our own devices. That was one hell of a memorable trip!

Sounds like a trip on Randy's "Mystery Bus".... :p

That was one hell of a memorable trip!

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D
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:D :D :D :D :D :D :D
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I wonder if Pickles wouldn't mind conducting the first FT tour of Japan. :cool: :D ?

I wonder if Pickles wouldn't mind conducting the first FT tour of Japan. :cool: :D ?

I'd be well up for that! ^

I'd love to have seen her face on day 4 when you said "no, not doin' that today, we're doin' this". Priceless. ^

I'd love to have seen her face on day 4 when you said "no, not doin' that today, we're doin' this". Priceless. ^

Tell me about it. She was doomed from the get-go. She was one of those middle-aged "by the book" Japanese ladies, you know, the ones that remind you of Ms. Yamada in beginner's Japanese class.

To begin with, she had everything timed to the minute (as is customary in Japan), but given that there were 33 of us, when 32 of us would be waiting in the bus for the #33, #17 would decided he/she wanted to pee, just as #33 was meandering in after making the mistake of ordering orange juice as an addition to the set breakfast, and getting hit for 500 yen (at the Keio Plaza, then an IC hotel), which #33 refused to pay as a matter of principle. Repeat this process 3-4 times every bus loading, and you can imagine the situation. That would throw the rest of the schedule for the day, and put her in a bad mood.

Also, she would insist to take us to all these handicraft stores as part of the "tour" (the usual gig). After the fifth visit to Tasaki Shinju, Amita, the Kyoto Handicraft center, and the like, she had an open rebellion on her hands. We wanted to go to Akhihabara and Shinjuku Electric Town instead, which she deemed crass and "not Japanese". How wrong she was, no question there.

At the time, I didn't know we were basically impugning not just her livelihood, but attacking the core of her very being by not going along with the program. Now I know we were (by Japanese standards) unbelievably rude, and I wouldn't be surprised if she quit her job in abject shame after day 10. Come to think of it, I'm surprised she lasted that long!

:D :D ^ , thanks for the laugh Pickles. The scene was very vividly described, good job.

Indeed, all very enjoyable -- but can someone other than me try to comment on the question asked by the OP? Just a thought.... :)

Indeed, all very enjoyable -- but can someone other than me try to comment on the question asked by the OP? Just a thought.... :)

I did........

Indeed, all very enjoyable -- but can someone other than me try to comment on the question asked by the OP? Just a thought.... :)

The OP may infer that Pickles' story is a classic - which has us all rolling about laughing because it hits the deep truth about subjecting yourself to the Japanese tour-group experience. It seems a shame to "analyze" this perfect story, but here goes....

I have never met the other 32 people who were on the tour with Pickles and I don't know their tour guide... but I do know that 32 individualistic Westerners on an extended Japanese-style tour is a recipe for an explosive collision - The unstoppable gaijin meeting the immovable tour guide.

Spontaneity, flexibility, serendipity…. messing around, playing it by ear, jammin'… those words just don’t exist in the Japanese tour guide’s vocabulary.

Japanese style tour guide hospitality is very strong on precision, order, punctuality, planning.

Don't get me wrong. I have no problem recommending JTB as a good travel agency and tour company. Actually, I love JTB - I know lots of people who work there and they are all simply overflowing with an ethos of quality and utmost customer care. But if you have a free spirit, I don't recommend signing up with any Japanese tour company for more than a couple of days at a time - because you will begin to feel constrained.

If you want to have a professional guide, perhaps you could use JTB for some parts of your Japan tour - but leave some days that you can decompress and spend time freely exploring things.

Excellent post jib71...... ^

Excellent post jib71...... ^

Indeed jib71 captures the "moral" of my story quite well. Unless you know for sure that your other tour members are going to "behave" throughout the trip, and are the kind of people that are so respectful of other's cultures that they are happy to constrain themselves to a Japanese bus tour for more than a day or two, then go ahead. Otherwise, jib71's suggestion that JTB be used sparingly at specific cities or sites is a good one. JTB (or any good travel agency, for that matter) can help organize more or less a "self-guided" tour, where there is a lot of free time and specific guided tours are contracted in advance. That's what I did first time I went to China 20+ years ago, and I thought it worked pretty well.

Just a corollary story to the Pickles Magical Mystery Tour, a few months ago my mother and my cousins came to Japan and we went to Kyoto for sightseeing. We were at one of the Daitokuji inner temples, place was pretty empty, so it was nice. Then, from the side, the temple abbott appears, guiding a tour group of a couple dozen Japanese middle-aged couples. The abbot was explaining the meaning of the rock garden, and his every comment and explanation was accompanied by unison "so desu nee", "naruhodo", "so desu kaa", "eeeh" from the tour group. It was so stereotypically funny my mother took a video of this scene for posterity.

Yes, actually Pickle's story was quite useful to me, although I felt a bit appalled at first. :D I don't think my family is the kind that could behave itself on a very regimented tour schedule either. Took RichardinSF's advice too to "save money and have a better time if you do your homework" and we've come up with our own tour ideas which we're far more enthusiastic about. :cool: We were actually being a bit lazy...so RichardinSF hit the nail on the head on that one. I think we were daunted by the possibility of getting completely lost and everything being in japanese and not knowing directions or how to use transportation. The thing I've noticed when travelling with friends is that when something goes wrong it doesn't necessarily ruin the fun, we tend to laugh and panic our way through it. But when travelling with family, problems just tend to just lead to arguments. My family, anyway. :rolleyes: But we're sorting ourselves out!