Japan, Tokyo to Nara by Road
Thirteen nights on the back roads of Honshu, from the galleries of Tokyo through the hot springs of Hakone, Izu and the Alps to the old capitals of Kyoto and Nara.
- 13 nights
- Seven stays
- Japan
- Art, ryokan, hot springs, kaiseki, craft
A journey of about 560 miles by road across Honshu, staying mostly in family-run ryokan with their own hot springs and kaiseki kitchens. Museums, workshops and theatre along the way tell the story of each place.
- Length
- 13 nights
- Pace
- Seven stays
- Style
- Art, ryokan, hot springs, kaiseki, craft
- Route
- Tokyo to Hakone to Izu to Matsumoto to Kaga to Kyoto to Nara
- TokyoThree nights
- HakoneTwo nights
- IzuOne night
- MatsumotoOne night
- KagaTwo nights
- KyotoTwo nights
- NaraTwo nights
01
Days 1 to 4 · three nights
Tokyo
Three nights in central Tokyo to start. Time goes to 21_21 Design Sight, a design space that feels more like a studio than a museum, and to SCAI The Bathhouse, a contemporary gallery inside a public bath some 200 years old. One evening is dinner at L'Effervescence, where Japanese ingredients meet flavours from further afield.
Where you stay
The Kitano Hotel Tokyo
The Kitano Hotel Tokyo has 70 rooms in Hirakawacho, in Chiyoda, beside the Nagatacho district. Its ninth-floor rooftop bar has an outdoor terrace over the city, and its restaurants include French dining and an Edomae sushi counter.
02
Days 4 to 6 · two nights
Hakone
About 61 miles by road to Hakone for two nights in the national park. You walk among some 120 sculptures in the gardens of the Hakone Open-Air Museum, and see Japanese, Chinese and Korean art from antiquity to now at the Okada Museum of Art.
Where you stay
Gora Kadan
Gora Kadan occupies a former villa of the Kan'in imperial family in Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. It is a ryokan with private hot-spring baths and a spa in its gardens.
03
Days 6 to 7 · one night
Izu
A short drive of about 30 miles to Shuzenji for one night. The town grew up around a hot spring and a temple that legend ties to the monk Kobo Daishi, and both are a walk from the inn.
Where you stay
Asaba
Asaba is a family-run ryokan on the Katsura River at Shuzenji, beside the Buddhist temple whose visitors it first lodged in 1484. It has its own Noh stage, brought from Tokyo in the late Meiji era, and dinner can be served in your room.
04
Days 7 to 8 · one night
Matsumoto
About 154 miles north into the Japanese Alps for a night at a mountain onsen above Matsumoto, with time to bathe and a kaiseki dinner.
Where you stay
Tobira Onsen Myojinkan
Tobira Onsen Myojinkan is a ryokan founded in 1931, at about 1,050 metres in the mountains above Matsumoto. It has several hot-spring baths, among them a standing bath looking over the gorge and an open-air bath, and serves kaiseki.
05
Days 8 to 10 · two nights
Kaga
About 153 miles west to the hot-spring town of Yamashiro Onsen in Kaga for two nights. Alongside the baths and a tea ceremony at the inn, one evening is at Zeniya, a counter with no fixed menu, where chef Shinichiro Takagi cooks kaiseki by the season and by what his guests like, on the belief that food and health are one.
Where you stay
Beniya Mukayu
Beniya Mukayu is a ryokan in the hot-spring town of Yamashiro Onsen in Kaga, with a calm Zen atmosphere. It has private hot-spring baths, a spa using medicinal herbs, kaiseki dinners and a tea ceremony led by the owner.
06
Days 10 to 12 · two nights
Kyoto
About 137 miles to Kyoto for two nights. The visits are to the city's crafts: Miyawaki Baisenan, a fan maker working since 1823, and Kamisoe in the Nishijin district, which gives new life to karakami, the hand-printed patterned paper of old Kyoto.
Where you stay
Kanamean Nishitomiya
Kanamean Nishitomiya is a ryokan in central Kyoto, kept by the same family for five generations. It has eight rooms in the sukiya style, each different, small courtyard gardens and kaiseki dinners.
07
Days 12 to 14 · two nights
Nara
A short drive of about 28 miles to Nara for the last two nights, with the town's deer close by. From here you reach Osaka for the National Museum of Art on Nakanoshima, a building of glass and steel holding Japanese works and European masters, and for a day at the National Bunraku Theatre, where some puppet programmes run all day. One dinner is at Kashiwaya, a ryotei on the edge of Osaka with a short menu that changes each month, served in a sukiya-style room.
Where you stay
Noborioji Hotel Nara
Noborioji Hotel Nara is a contemporary hotel in central Nara, at the gates of a temple, with the town's wild deer close by.
Ways to make it yours
- In Kyoto, Hiiragiya, a ryokan kept by the same family for seven generations, in place of Kanamean Nishitomiya
This is a sample. The hotels, the pace and the order are where we start, not where we finish: every journey is designed around the people taking it.
Made around you
Most travel is bought. This is designed.
Before anything is booked, we talk: who is travelling, how you like to spend a morning, and the hotel preferences below the obvious, from the kind of bath you like to the time you wake and how much daylight you need in a room. You see options where options matter and clean recommendations where they don't.
The same person remains your point of contact from the first reply to the trip after next. No handovers. No team.
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