Japan Travel Review

The trip was a long-awaited self-guided trip to Japan on an itinerary that was our own design. The company was willing and helpful in accommodating our desire to see a lot in our allotted time, and assured us that the arrangements they helped us make-hotel reservations and train schedules- were possible for us to manage on our own. This turned out to be only partly true; they assumed that we would be much more able to maneuver in a strange culture without language skills then we actually were. We had to struggle to successfully complete our itinerary, and there were a few instances in which the company's errors led to significant inconvenience. Having said that, we learned through our struggles, and did emerge as more competent, but at times it was a struggle. We could have used a bit more help than we got, and the promise of "24 hour assistance" was not always true. Sometimes it felt that they were impatient with our concerns about things that were obvious to them, like finding one's way in a huge train station without language skills, or how to dial telephone calls; "you'll do fine" was the common response, which was not always the case.