What a year 2014 has been, not only for us here at Unique Japan Tours, but for Japan Tourism in general. It was only announced last month that the number of foreign visitors to Japan topped 11,000,000 in the first 10 months of 2014, more than all of 2013! What this did mean is that […]
Written by: Gail Gold who joined a self guided tour including Tokyo, Kyoto, & Takayama. Japan, to me, is where the future meets the past. You see it every day in every aspect of life. The first thing that struck me was the immaculateness of Japan. You see it on the streets, on any form […]
Spectacular scenery but word of warning – leave your baby behind!! Myself, my husband (Japanese), and my soon to be two year old daughter arrived at Nagiso station after a one hour train ride from Nagoya. The journey from Nagoya takes in just enough of rice fields and nature to get you in the mood […]
–> First-time visitors to Tokyo often ask where the centre of Tokyo is. Answers vary according to the person who you are talking to but the plain fact is that there is no one true centre for this sprawling metropolis. However, if you were to go back around 100 years, there was one station […]
Few people would associate Tokyo with mountains. However, after just an hour’s train ride heading west out of Tokyo and you will find yourself in a lusciously green mountainous area. Welcome to Mount Takao. Visited by over 2.5 million people a year, this is not much of a secret to Tokyoites, many of whom take […]
Many people say that much of modern-day Japan exists because of its samurai roots. The samurai may no longer exist but a symbol of their power and strength does: castles. Estimates vary in the number of castles still standing today in Japan. But almost every major city or area of the country has its own […]
Immaculately wrapped gifts are the norm in Japan Anytime a Japanese person goes abroad, he or she will go armed with a long shopping list – not of things for themselves but those for their loved ones, friends, work colleagues, bosses, people in their hobby group. The list is sometimes longer than their arms, […]
Traditionally, Japanese people like to take their holidays on mass. One of the biggest holidays of the year is O-bon or the Festival of Bon, which normally falls around mid-August of each year. A Japanese Buddhist custom held in honour the spirits of one’s ancestors, O-bon has been celebrated in Japan for more than 500 […]
Take kabuki and remove from it the gorgeously colourful costumes, entrancing music and fantastical stories and what you are left with, in its bare essence, is a living, breathing traditional art form. Any visitor to Japan that goes to watch a kabuki show is blown away with how dramatic it is. Perhaps this is because […]
They say that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Well, then, how many words do you think the photo here is worth? Too many to count, I reckon. It would be futile to try to describe a fireworks display in Japan, for they are just something that you have to experience. They don’t come […]
