Review

This was the Great Falls Elementary School class trip, so the itinerary was partially set by the events we were attending. In retrospect, our itinerary was balanced between urban and suburban, had contrasting historical contexts to add (e.g. Kyoto vs Kanazawa), and was better in enlightening Japanese history than another trip likely would have.

Overall hotels were great, particularly the Iwaso Ryokan on Mia Jima and the Hotel Nikko in Kanazawa. Hotel Monterrey in Kyoto was also nice. Only less ideal property was the Shiba Park Hotel in Tokyo, whose location was great but the Annex rooms had inconsistent air conditioning for the latter stay on our agenda.

Breakfasts at all the hotels were excellent.

All were professional and prepared.

Very helpful itinerary; only complaint was that text referenced days by day#, while agenda was by date - thus we needed to count each day to cross reference the detailed and summary agendas. Would have been helpful to number the days on the agenda to ease cross-reference. Also, in some cases morning meet times for guides or luggage transport was not specific and thus there was some uncertainty, but that was worked out via our tour\'s leader without hassle.

Use of JR passes and Suica on the tours, while we had the guide, was great since we could get the hang of it. After we were acclimated the amount of hand-holding we needed was markedly less.