Review: Luxury Japan Family Vacation, Tokyo, Sapporo, Kyoto, Hukkaido, Matsumoto, Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, Kiddyland

We spent nights in 13 different locations during the tour, including a string of 1-2 nights stays. While it was great to see such a wide variety of Japan, my family grew tired of packing up and moving to another place so much. If I had to do it all over again, I would have chosen four key locations and spent one week in each, doing more day trips than moves. I think if we had chosen places like Sapporo, Matsumoto, Kyoto, and Tokyo, we could still have seen many of the same things (though not all) but had been less worn out by changing hotels. Further, it would have given us a bit more insurance if we got a run of bad weather. In our case, we got hit by the outer bands of Typhoon Halong for several days which meant that we missed out on a couple planned experiences without any real way to adapt or make up missed places (such as Shirakawa-go, Kamikochi, and parts of Kyoto).

Also, I would have considered renting a car during the Matsumoto leg in addition to the Sapporo leg. Driving through the lower Alps region would have afforded us some flexibility without necessarily incurring the dangers/challenges that we'd find in Kyoto and Tokyo.